I want to hold nothing back.

Anyone who knows me at all, either peripherally or intimately, will probably laugh incredulously at that statement--which attests to my success thus far in that regard.

By nature and (undoubtedly) nurture, I am an extremely inhibited person. I tremble at the idea of vulnerability. I carefully sequester my Self into padded security vaults, and trot out occasional carefully selected artifacts for sterile display to those who pay a certain fee. Thus, the self that others know is as lifeless and rigged as a window display. Such miserliness cannot other than poison me in the long run.

Self-hoarding is not loving, even when it is done out of a desire to shield others from the ugliness and brutality and shame that is as inherently me as my more lovable or acceptable qualities. And above all else, I yearn to love...as freely and loosely and vastly as I have been loved.

The Spirit, the Lover of my soul, is gently teaching me that in order to cease living for myself, I must stop covering my tracks, I must stop clenching my soul shut, and I must allow Him to use my entire Being (heart, soul, mind, and strenght) as His consecrated vessel.

And why would I want to seal away my being? Am I not placed here to fellowship with God and others and the world around me? Isn't withdrawal from that communion a sort of suicide? Ultimately, don't I long for intimacy?

It is not, after all, as though Selfhood can be sapped. My being is not crude oil. Rather, the more I give, the more I have. I've tasted this, and still I withhold. Human nature is a marvel.

I want to hold nothing back.