To Bare Our Soul

I place her new baby on her bare chest and the emotion in the room is palpable. We do it at every delivery because it begins the bond.

Skin touches skin,

And oxytocin surges…

And we know from the research, ANY skin touching skin, releases oxytocin, initiating and strengthening the bond.

It’s amazing how touch rivals oxygen, in allowing us to live.

They take one another in, and the vulnerability and rawness begin it all.

And we all need a connection and a bond–someone to bare our soul with.

Twelve years of marriage now, and I still bare my soul to him in the late night hours. And he nods with understanding, fighting the urge to fix it all. And as my chest heaves and the tears fall, he holds me.

As I verbalize my fear and insecurity, his words reassure me I’m not alone. And I have nothing to hide, no secrets to hold, because we’ve never had secrets. We’ve never needed to—our souls always bare to each other, as wrong as it initially was.

Soul connection happens in the bare places…

In the naked places,

The exposed places,

In the skin to skin places.

And God longs to have that kind of intimacy with each one of us…

For us to still our hearts and lay them bare before Him…

To abandon all pretenses,

Shake our shame,

Give over our guilt,

And pour out our pain,

That we can know Him … really KNOW Him.

I think of the Hebrew word yada, which means to know relationally, by experience. It’s the same word used in Genesis 4 to describe how Adam knew Eve, the same word God uses to describe how we can know Him.

Intimately.

Not from afar,

Not as an acquaintance.

He wants us to yada Him–to connect from our soul-exposed places that His love may ooze right in … oozing and easily penetrating the broken places … the places where the bareness of who we are resides.

But so often, instead, we bring to Him the rough and closed-heart places. We require His love to soak through our hardened calloused surfaces—places not bare at all, places not fully surrendered to Him.

Oh that we’d get real with Him and let Him in to satisfy the deepest longing of our hearts…

To know and be known.

The very bareness of the connection giving us life.

Do you have someone with whom to bare your soul?

What has been the biggest challenge to letting someone in?

I’m joining Lisa-Jo, over at her site today, to take five minutes and just write without worrying if it’s just right or not. The challenge is to write for 5 (15 today) minutes flat with no editing, tweaking or self critiquing, with the prompt she gives. And today, her prompt:

Bare…

Photo credit: Summers, Flickr Creative Commons