There is nothing more vulnerable than a newborn child. Left alone a baby would soon die. Babies need to be fed, clothed, cleaned, carried, and loved. Above all, loved. Life in third world orphanages show that infants who are fed and cleaned and clothed, but left unloved, often don’t live.

The word vulnerability literally means the ability to be vulnerable.

How good are you at being vulnerable? Do you even want to be vulnerable?

As a baby you had no choice in being vulnerable: you were vulnerable because God made you that way. He could have made you like a baby deer that can run like the dickens within hours of its birth. But God didn’t do that for humans. God made it essential that newborn humans must be held. Carried. Loved.

Sadly, a lot of us are not loved correctly when we are children so we grow up lacking the ability to live vulnerably. Not to mention the fact that the world teaches us that being vulnerable is a bad thing.

Stand on your own two feet. Pull yourself up by your boot straps. Carry your own load. Do it your way. Be independent. Live your life.

We grow up hearing all these voices and sooner or later we believe that this is how we are suppose to live. Trusting only in ourselves. But there is nothing in the Bible that says: Do it your way. In fact the Bible says that doing it your way is a sin.

“We all like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” Isaiah 53:6.

You don’t have to lie, steal, or kill to commit sin. Just going your own way is a sin says the Bible.

Today while thinking about it, I made a list off the top of my head of ten things that make me feel vulnerable.

1. loving others
2. saying I’m sorry
3. naked with my husband
4. sharing my past
5. sharing my dreams
6. raising my children
7. riding a horse on a mountain trail
8. forgiving those who hurt me
9. being honest before others
10. being honest before God

I encourage you to make a vulnerable list too. Then read over it slowly and ask yourself why these things make you feel vulnerable.

In viewing my list, I realize that the things that make me feel vulnerable are also things that fulfill me. If I didn’t push through and do these things that open me up, my life would be a lot less full. I don’t want to live a life half closed. I want to live fully open.

To live wide open, I have to live vulnerability. And the secret of vulnerability is trust.

Last night while giving seven-week-old Christian his bath, I looked into his blue eyes and saw complete trust as I held him in the water. Christian is a colicky baby, but he loves the bath. To get him to stop crying at night, Scott and I swap turns taking a bath with him. As a baby, Christian has no idea that all we would have to do is remove our hands and he would drown. In realizing this, I also realize that all God would have to do is remove his hands and I would drown in this world too.

Knowing how vulnerable I am in God’s hands makes me long to trust Him more. As I embrace my vulnerability with God, I can embrace vulnerably in general. Knowing that God won’t let me go gives me the courage to practice the art of vulnerability.