GRACE BLOGS COLLECTION
Deep on the inside of every human being is the inherent need to be loved, to know that they have value and worth. No one can escape it nor deny it. Some people try to act all macho and tough as if they don’t need to be loved, or that they don’t need anybody, but it is not true. We all have the need to be loved, to know that we matter.
That inherent desire is hardwired into every single human being by our Creator. The Bible tells us that God is love. It also describes that God created man in His image and likeness. We were created out of love, to love and to be loved.
It’s been proven that babies need human contact. They need to be loved on. They need that one-on-one attention.
As children are growing up, they want to be loved by their parents. They want their parents to notice them. I cannot count how many times, as a parent, I have heard one of my children say, “hey Dad, watch me. Hey, Dad, did you see me do that? Hey, Dad, I can do this.” It’s all an attempt for me to pay attention to them, thus letting them know that they matter to me.
Teens, even though they certainly don’t act like it, want their parents’ approval, attention, and affection. They are testing their boundaries as they begin to spread their wings of independence. But they subconsciously want the safety of their parents’ boundaries. They want to know that if they fail, their parents will be there to catch them. Even the most rebellious teen wants someone to care about them.
That’s one reason why gangs are so attractive to some teens. The gang offers love, family, acceptance and a place to belong. Even though the love is misconstrued, the members feel loved.
As we mature, we look for a spouse to love and to love us. We then want to create children to love. Why do we have kids? We know that they are a lot of work, very costly, and there’s a definite possibility that they will rebel, not listen and could reject us. Yet, we continue to produce children because of the love that we want to give them, and receive from them.
We were born to be loved.
We were born to live in love.
We were born to love.
Love is at the core of our being because we were created in God’s image and He is love. I wish that we could say that we are love, but we cannot. Sin has distorted us, handicapped us, and made us inhumane to the point that we can utterly hate someone to the point of murder. Hate is so ugly.
Hate causes us to devalue someone’s life.
“winter” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by shioshvili, text added, flickr.com
Hate causes us to want to hurt them.
Hate can destroy us.
We were born to love, not to hate. We were born to be loved, not to be hated.
If we could only learn to receive God’s love, we would be changed. If we can wake up every day realizing that we were born to be loved by Him, it would make the biggest difference. I have been practicing that lately. Each morning as I lay in my bed before I get up, and each night before I go to sleep, I repeat to myself, “I was born to be loved.”
Of course, the thoughts of all that I do wrong come through my head, but I quickly silence them by reminding myself that God doesn’t love me on the basis of what I do. He loves me because of who He is.
That’s the beauty of loving others. I don’t have to love people based on what they do or don’t do. I can love them because I choose to. It’s hard sometimes because of people’s rejection and attitudes towards me. However, when I realize, and fully grasp, the fact that I was born to be loved and that I am loved immensely by the Father then I can reflect that love to others.
When I allow myself to be full of God’s love then I can give it away because I have a never ending supply.
As I realize how much He loves me and I look at others and realize that He loves them that much too, then should loving them be an issue for me? It shouldn’t be. It’s only when I let my personal judgments and critical thoughts about that person get in the way that I will stop loving them. When I see them as God sees them, I will love them. When I look at them through my human, imperfect eyes I may or may not love them.
My earthly love tends to be conditional, which really isn’t love at all. See my blog on Unconditional Love is an Oxymoron for a deeper discussion on this.
God’s love is unconditional because it’s based upon who He is rather than our actions. What if we did the same? What if we stopped looking at people’s actions as a basis for our love for them? What if we just looked at them and realized their number one purpose in life is to be loved and our number one purpose in life was to love them?
I think the world would be a better place.
You were born to be loved!
I love quotes, especially ones that stop me in my tracks and make me think. This is one of those quotes. I read it recently and it made me really think. It is a very powerful and true quote.
Most Americans today are not as familiar with the Bible as they were in generations past. In decades past, the Bible was revered, upheld with esteem and followed as a moral compass for society. These days it’s not the same. Many do not believe the Bible to be relevant for today. Most do not know the instructions that it contains, or if they do it’s based on Old Covenant Law and not New Covenant relationship. We live in a very Biblical illiterate society.
Many do not believe the Bible to be relevant for today. Most do not know the instructions that it contains, or if they do it’s based on Old Covenant Law and not New Covenant relationship. We live in a very Biblical illiterate society.
Many would say that it’s not politically correct (and it is not).
Many would deem it offensive (and it certainly can be).
On the flip side of this coin, there are many Christians who use the Bible as a weapon to beat people up, to condemn them and to make their own views seemingly valid. This is just as dangerous as not believing in the Bible, maybe more so.
The issue of this quote, though, is that most people will never read the Bible but they will read our lives. And that’s the way, I believe, that God wants it.
Jesus Himself said, “all men will know that you are My disciples by your love for one another.” I wonder how much love the world is seeing out of Jesus’ followers. I wonder how many of us would truly be considered disciples if there were a “love meter” somehow attached to us that all could read.
Our lives are Good News (gospel=good news). Our lives (our attitudes, ethics, words, actions, etc.) should reflect the goodness, love, and mercy of God. As followers of Christ, our lives should be the gospel that people are reading.
So, the question becomes what kind of news are they getting by reading our lives? Are they getting good news or a judgment order? Are they reading a love story or a condemnation of society?
As Christians, our life is the message of God to the world . . . at least in the eyes of the reader.
I know that at times I have been good news to those reading my life. Other times, well, I’ve been the bearer of bad news . . . for the reader, of course, but not for me. It’s the case of us vs. them. Usually, the “them” never get a happy ending.
I want my life to be the fifth gospel. I want my life to portray good news. I want my life to shout to the world that God is good, God is love and that He really wants to have a relationship with them.
If I can get them to see the Good News, God can take care of all the other stuff that we seem to be more interested in. It seems to me that we are so busy preaching against sin to the world that we have failed to just simply love. That’s not to say that we lower our standards but it is to say that I don’t have to defend God, the Bible or truth. My job is to love.
Jesus isn’t going to rate me on how much I had my doctrine sorted out and straight. Neither will the world, for that matter. What Jesus is looking at is how much love I am expressing. By this will all men know that you are my disciples…..by your love for one another. That’s the benchmark. That’s the litmus test.
As a Christian, I see too many of my fellow Christians passing out judgment like Halloween candy.
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When, in reality, Christians are not to pass judgment on the world, but the world can pass judgment on Christians. I wrote about this here.
Let’s reread the opening quote: “There are five Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian—but most people never read the first four.” ~Rodney ‘Gypsy’ Smith
What about your life? What are the people around you reading from your life? Are they getting an accurate picture of God or an inaccurate one? Would you be labeled a disciple by those reading your life or would they question your faith?
I want to be the fifth gospel.
Stretch marks are unsightly. They occur on people who have either gained weight or on women during pregnancy because the body is gaining weight rapidly and the skin cannot keep up with the changes. They happen because the skin gets stretched due to growth. I don’t know anyone that likes them or even desires them.
Stretch marks represent growth. A body grows causing the skin to stretch and tug resulting in stretch marks. While it happens every day in the natural, it should be happening to us spiritually as well. If natural stretch marks represent growth, then spiritual stretch marks represent growth as well.
But in order to grow, we must be stretched. And that’s not always easy nor pleasant. But stretching is necessary if we are going to grow. I deeply believe that God is more interested in our growth of character than he is our comfort. And our growth of character is almost always painful. But it is necessary.
I want spiritual stretch marks. I want to have signs that I am being stretched and growing. Paul talked about the marks that he bore in his body because of the Gospel.
Galatians 6:17 “From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”
I know that he is not talking about spiritual stretch marks. He is talking about being physically beaten and stoned. While I doubt that I will ever be persecuted for my faith to the extent that I am physically beaten, I can bear on my body the marks of Jesus in becoming more like him.
We should always be growing. But, there are seasons in our life where the growth is difficult. We fight the changes that God wants to bring into our life. We resist change. We don’t want to give up things that He is asking us to give up. We don’t want to deal with character issues or sins that we may not want to be getting rid of. We fight His dealings with us over holding unforgiveness and bitterness towards another person. As we go through these struggles our “spiritual skin” is stretched resulting in spiritual stretch marks.
While they are certainly unsightly in the natural, for me my spiritual stretch marks represent all the areas I have grown in. They are a reminder of how hard change was, how I was stretched uncomfortably and how that I did manage to grow through the difficulty.
I wish that change was easy. I admire bodybuilders that have worked with weights and exercise to form their bodies where their muscles are ripped and bulging. That will never be me because I don’t want to put in the work and effort required to do that. I want six pack abs but don’t have the desire, nor the motivation, to bring mine out of hiding. But even body builders get stretch marks. It’s because their muscles are growing faster than their skin. It’s a sign of growth.
So, my point is try to not struggle with the growth that God wants to bring into your life. The past couple of years has been a major season of growing for me. It’s been a period of lots of stretching, tugging, challenging growth. Some days I fought it, falling into the muck and mire of self-pity. Other days I was embracing the change and the growth. I am glad that God has me where I am right now. There is no way that I would want to go through everything that I have been through, but I wouldn’t trade my stretch marks for anything.
The good news is that stretch marks can go away. Naturally, you can use creams and lotions. I believe that in the spiritual the Lord also helps us to get rid of spiritual stretch marks by rubbing in His healing balm. They are simply a short term reminder of our growth.
I know that the Bible doesn’t talk about spiritual stretch marks. I have taken some dramatic license here to illustrate my point. For me, the season that I have been in has resulted in some serious spiritual growth and I feel the marks. In the natural, people tend to hide their stretch marks. I think we do the same spiritually. Sometimes when we are going through tests, trials and circumstances that God uses for our growth, we can feel shame and embarrassment because we don’t have it all together. We feel “less than” because we are struggling with doubts and fears. So, we tend to hide, isolating ourselves from others.
But we need each other. We are called to bear one another’s burdens. The spiritually strong are called to support the spiritually weak, without judgment or condemnation. We all need someone to help us through our growth season. We all need someone to be an encourager and a support. The stretching time in our life is usually hard and we need the support of others.
What about you? Has God been stretching you in your character, thinking, gifting or spiritual maturity? Do you have any “spiritual stretch marks” to show?
Have you ever wanted something that you were told you couldn’t have? For some reason, it always seems to make us want it even more. Some would call that human nature. But I wonder what it must have been like for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They didn’t have a fallen, sinful nature. But they faced a very real and dangerous temptation.
I know for me that when I can’t have something, it seems that I want it all the more. I am working on my eating habits right now. I have been told to cut out salt, processed and fried food along with decreasing my intake of sugar. The problem: I like all these things. To be told that I can’t have them makes them all the more desirable.
If you have ever fasted, you know what I am talking about. When you can’t have food, you are all the more tempted by that food. When a child is told not to do something, it seems they become hell-bent on doing what they cannot do.
I call this forbidden fruit! We want the forbidden fruit. It seems that forbidden fruit seems so sweet.
When we look at the story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (TKGE), we can come away with three lessons applicable to our lives today.
They bought into the lie that God was holding back on them and that what they needed would be provided by eating the forbidden fruit.
You and I do the same thing today. We often times feel that God is withholding something from us. We feel as if we need something that God is not providing. Maybe it’s love from a partner, a sense of value or worth, or we don’t feel accepted. We end up going to other people and things instead of trusting God. We end up eating forbidden fruit.
It looks good and tasty. It looks like what we need and what we are looking for, but in the end, it never accomplishes what we thought it would. Just ask someone who has gotten hooked on drugs, or gave their body away because they simply wanted to be loved. Ask someone who has gone after forbidden fruit. Better yet, take a look at your own life and examine every time you ate forbidden fruit. What was the outcome?
They believed that there would be no consequences to their eating the forbidden fruit.
God told them that if they ever ate from the TKGE that they would die. The serpent deceived Eve into believing that God was simply threatening them with death, but they would not really die. She bought the lie and ate the fruit.
They ended up dying that day. Not physically, that would come many, many years later. But they died to themselves, they died to each other. In dying, they died. Adam was willing to throw all the blame on God and Eve. Eve rightfully pointed to the serpent, but she wasn’t willing to accept her own responsibility. The cost was way higher than Eve could have imagined.
There are always consequences to our choices. Some choices have great consequences. Others, not so great. The problem we run into is when we think that our choices don’t have consequences. We think that it will never happen to us, that we are above it somehow. We think that we can handle whatever may come.
But we can’t.
We still fall for that same lie: “you really won’t suffer if you make this choice.” God just wants you happy. How many times, when someone eats the forbidden fruit, they justify it by saying, “God knows my heart.” They don’t believe they will suffer consequences because, after all, God must know that they are good in heart.
Even though Jesus has forgiven us of our sins, our sin still has consequences. The wages of sin is still death. Most of the time we are punished by our sin, not for our sin. Eating forbidden fruit always has negative consequences. God can, and does, bring good out of our faulty mistakes, but our mistakes still carry consequences.
Eating the forbidden fruit caused Adam and Eve to experience shame.
Every time I have eaten forbidden fruit I have experienced shame. I hated myself for making such a stupid decision. I had to battle being ashamed of myself for messing up. Thankfully, Jesus is all about taking shame off of people, but our choices often times still bring us to a place of shame.
When we are ashamed we tend to avoid others, it causes us to hide from those closest to us and from God. That’s what Adam and Eve did. They covered themselves, in essence, hiding from one another, and they hid from God. We do the same whenever we deal with shame.
God had provided them with a garden that had everything they needed to sustain their lives. Every tree in the garden was good to look at and was good for food. God wanted to be their source of wisdom and knowledge.
Eve fell for the deception of the serpent. She thought God was being stingy, holding back from her something that she needed. She didn’t think that the consequences would be what God said they would be. In the end, she suffered greatly because she trusted more in the serpent and in her own decision making than she did in the wisdom and love of God.
When we eat from forbidden fruit the same happens to us. We tend to think that God is holding back from us the things we think we need. So, we go looking for them in all the wrong places. We don’t believe that there will be negative consequences to our actions. In the end, when we eat from forbidden fruit, we end suffering and, most of the time will cause others around us to suffer as well.
Don’t fall for the lie! God has all that you need and will be all that you need. He is not stingy or holding back. He loves you more than you know and is generous and gracious to humanity.
What about you? Have you ever thought you needed something that God wasn’t supplying? Did you eat forbidden fruit? What was your experience like?
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Gifts come in all shapes and sizes. My family Christmas tree is full of gifts in different colored wrapping paper, bows and ribbon. Some are big and some are small. Each of my children hopes that the biggest one goes to them. For some reason, we often get excited thinking that the bigger the gift the better it will be.
Do you remember the greatest gift you ever received at Christmas time?
Christmas is celebrated by Christians as the birthdate of Jesus. We consider Him to be the greatest gift of all. We believe that He is the Son of God that miraculously became a human, born of a virgin. We believe that He died on a cross for the sins of mankind that we could be restored to a rightful relationship with our Father in Heaven.
Truly, He is a great gift.
You would think such greatness would come in a great package. When we want to give someone we love and cherish a special gift we will go to great lengths to pick out the right wrapping paper and the perfect bow. We might even set up the surroundings to make everything perfect for when they open that gift.
But, He didn’t come wrapped up in a great package.
He was born around smelly animals. Truly not a place for a king, let alone the God of the Universe.
He didn’t look like royalty. He was born to commoner parents. No regal robes, no silver or gold plated rattles. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.
His birth was made known by angels to shepherds and not to anyone else. He was born in a little, out of way town that didn’t have much significance.
His birth was low-key and was not something that you expect of a great King.
In other words, a gift came wrapped up in an unassuming package.
Throughout Jesus’ life, He was not received by many of His own. He didn’t come wrapped in the package they were expecting. They were expecting a mighty warrior King that would free them from Roman oppression. He came as the Suffering Servant. He did not look or act like they thought he should look or act.
They missed the gift because of the packaging.
Have you ever missed the gift of God because it didn’t come the way you thought it should? I have. I looked at the package (the person) and didn’t like what I saw so I was unable to receive the gift.
God wraps His gifts in the packaging of humanity.
He wants us to be able to see beyond the packaging. He wants us to see the gift inside.
The gifts under the tree are not really about the wrapping paper. It’s not even about the box that the gift comes packaged in. It’s the gift itself. It’s what is wrapped up in the paper and the box.
It’s the same with people. It’s not about what’s on the outside. It’s about the inside. Learn to look beyond the exterior to see the heart. This Christmas season, and throughout the coming year, learn to see beyond the exterior of every human being and see the gift that is on the inside.
Most of us have been there . . . in the car, going on a trip using a GPS to direct us where we are going. Maybe you missed a turn or didn’t want to follow directions. Then it happens, you make her mad and she starts in . . . recalculating! A GPS is great and very handy, especially when you come up to an accident or road construction and you have to take a detour. A GPS can help you find the shortest route.
But what do you do when life throws you a detour. What do you do when your life’s journey is going well and then all of sudden because of a wrong turn, a bad decision or someone else’s bad decision, you are suddenly lost, facing a dead-end, looking at a major detour or just simply broke down at the side of the road?
In a GPS, you can update the maps to stay current with new roads and shorter ways to get you to where you want to go. Life isn’t that easy. Sometimes, you might know exactly what to do in order to keep moving forward. Sometimes, there will be people who can give you directions. There are going to be some times that your journey is so overwhelming that you just want to sit and have a good cry.
It seems that I have been on a major detour for a couple of years now. My life was going along pretty good, and I was enjoying the journey. However, there was a major roadblock that required me to get off the fast lane and spend some time in the middle of nowhere trying to get things sorted out.
Every time I would seemingly get started again I would end up down another deserted road or dead end, for which my “life’s GPS” didn’t have a map for. Every other time in my life that I had faced adversity I usually knew what to do to keep moving and get out of the situation. This time, I didn’t. My “life’s GPS” just keep repeating over and over…..recalculating.
Have you ever been there? It sucks and it’s frustrating.
I remember many times crying out to God, “I’m so lost.” Finally, one day the Lord spoke back to me and said, “Michael, you are not lost. You are in Me and I know exactly where you are.” My response: “I am glad you know where I am but could you tell me where I am because I haven’t a clue.” My prayer changed to, “Lord, I know I am not lost, but I don’t know where I am.” While I chuckle at that, it can get frustrating at times because I want to be in control. I want to be able to chart my course. I want to know where I am going, how I am going to get there and how long it’s going to take.
But, if Jesus is going to be Lord of my life, then I have to yield control to Him and trust Him that everything is going to work out.
Sometimes, though, I struggle in my trust of God. I know that God loves me, that He is good and kind, and that He has a plan. It just feels that He went on vacation and won’t be back for a while and I can’t reach Him. I know that most Christians have felt that way before.
The good news is that God does know where we are, we are never lost to Him. He has a way of recalculating our lives and the journeys we are on in a way that will always work out for our good. It just seems that sometimes the GPS is always on recalculating while we are anxious to get back to the interstate so that we can zoom along again to our destination.
There are three things I’ve learned through my journey of constant recalculation.
1. Along life’s journey, there will always be times when you have to recalculate.
I think that’s been one of my biggest struggles. That is, what happened to me wasn’t supposed to happen to me! I was supposed to be exempt from that. It wasn’t fair, and I have let God know that on many occasions.
God knows the trials, bumps, detours and roadblocks that we are going to face. He knows when we are going to slam into an obstacle in the road while we are flying 70 miles an hour down life’s highway. He knows about everything that is going to jump out at us and the things that are going to blindside us.
He knows. And He has a way of recalculating our journey when needed.
2. God is not afraid of detours.
Many times we think that God is surprised by our detours. He always has a plan. He’s not afraid of our detours.
For most of my life, I have been too focused on the destination. I have been learning that God is focused on the journey. It’s how we handle ourselves on the journey that God is looking at. Remember the story of Jairus’ daughter in Matthew 9? Jairus asks Jesus to come heal his daughter. Jesus agrees but on the way, a women who had been hemorrhaging for many years touched his cloak and was healed. Jesus was on a mission to heal a girl but there was an interruption, and a woman was healed.
It was a detour and God was not messed up by it. And He isn’t messed up by your detours either. You never know when a miracle might take place in the midst of your detour.
3. The destination isn’t the goal . . . the journey is.
Growing up, I heard the word destiny a lot. It was all about reaching your destiny. We all had a destiny that God was going to get us to. For me, my destiny was to become a Senior Pastor. I remember my first day as a Senior Pastor. I had reached my destiny . . . now what?
I was so focused on my destiny that I wasn’t paying attention to the journey. And detours along the way were points of depression and frustration to me, not opportunities for miracles. It thought that each detour, roadblock, and dead-end was a hindrance to my destiny.
It’s in the journey of life that we find God. It’s in the detours of life that we discover his grace. It’s in the dead-ends of our journey that we find God’s redemption. God is more interested in our journey than He is in our destination. In reality, the journey is the destination.
Each moment is the destination because this moment is all we have. I am learning to live in the moment.
Although we may not like detours, dead-ends, and road blocks, they are a part of life. God’s not afraid of them. God will use them. God will recalculate your journey whenever you face a detour, dead-end or road block.
Recalculating . . . . . . .
One of the great truths I was guided to share with the campers at the Lake Beauty Bible Camp, Minnesota, in 1978, was the need to have a balanced view of new creation realities. Biblical truths can be either in contrast or in correspondence with each other. Law and grace, for example, are in contrast… Read More
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Over the years, I have built up walls around my heart. Because of things I have gone through in the past — hurts, rejections, disappointments — I have built these ramparts to protect myself. A lot of us have walls up to protect us from getting hurt. We somehow think that if we isolate our hearts — the center of our emotions and feelings — that we will not get hurt again.
Khotyn Fortress by Yarik Zinkof, Flickr, CC
Sometimes that’s true. Those of us that have fortified hearts don’t allow others into the inner sanctuary of our true selves. We allow people to come in only so far until they are subtly reminded that there is a wall there that says no entry. It’s a defense against getting hurt.
Sometimes, people even build up a wall to keep God out of their inner sanctuary.
But we were not meant to live in isolation. We were not meant to live without others. God created humanity to be interdependent upon one another. We are not meant to be co-dependent but interdependent. We need each other. We need the comfort of another human being during our times of distress, anxiousness, and sadness. We need the strength of another human being when we are struggling and are weak.
We need another human being to see our frailties, weaknesses and failings in order for us to realize that we are lovable and worth immense value despite our brokenness and imperfections. We need another human being to see the shambles of our lives and tell us that it’s going to be okay.
That cannot, and will not happen, if we keep people out of the innermost places of our hearts.
For those that have walls built, because of hurt, rejection, being let down, trauma, disappointment or betrayal by someone close to you, you have most likely stated, “that will never happen to me again.” To keep it from happening again, you build a wall.
Some of us not only have a wall, but we have also built a moat and have a drawbridge. We’ve “castled our heart” to keep the bad people out.
The problem is that in protecting ourselves from the bad people, we’ve also denied ourselves the good ones.
I know because this is how I have lived for a long time . . . with a fort around my heart because I don’t want to get hurt again. I don’t want to be betrayed again. I don’t want to allow myself to get too close to people. And it’s stopped me from receiving the very thing I long for, the very thing I need….love.
I know that people love me. Love is to be shared between two or more people. Love is like a dance. It’s an intimate movement between two people. Love is not supposed to be one sided. The hope of loving someone is for them to love you back. When you have walls up to keep people at a distance, it’s hard to dance the dance of love with them. It’s hard to share intimate moments because you have people at arms length.
Many of us are like two awkward twelve-year-olds at our first dance. We are simply facing each other with enough room to put someone else between us as we shuffle our feet back and forth. Love is meant to be intimate, two souls touching one another in the deepest recesses of the heart. Love is allowing someone else to see you in all your glory and all your weaknesses. Love is allowing someone to see your best and your worst, knowing that they are not going to leave you. Love is knowing that you are valuable to someone else not because of what you have done or not done, but simply because you are.
When you have walls around your heart, you cannot experience the depth of that love, either with another human being or with your Heavenly Father. We were created to have these deep connections with other human beings as well as our Father.
Because of the brokenness of humanity, we have all experienced pain, trauma, hurt and betrayal at the hands of someone who loved us. We have caused pain, trauma, hurt and betrayal to someone else ourselves. We may very well be the reason someone else has put up a wall.
I know that God has been dealing with me about my walls. I know that He has been asking me to let Him in past the protective layers of my fortress. I know that, like the walls of Jericho, He wants to demolish those walls so that He and I can dance the dance of love. As I allow Him to do that, He is also asking me to let others in. Jesus came that we might be free, but we will never be free as long as we have a wall up around our heart.
What about you? Do you have walls built up? Do you find it hard to “let people in?”