To Be Known Without Being Understood

There comes a moment when truth must be entrusted to God rather than defended before men

“Lord, I consent to be known

without being understood.

You know me.

Let that be enough.”

There is a strange protection in speaking indirectly.

We can write about surrender, abandonment, silence, loss, obedience, the stripping away of identity. We can speak truthfully—even painfully—and yet remain partially hidden.

The words reveal us.

But they also veil us.

It is another thing altogether to sit before someone we love and say:

This is where I am.

Not where I may be someday.

Not one possibility among several.

Not a theological question I am considering.

But:

This is what has happened within me. This is what I can no longer pretend not to know.

There is a terrible vulnerability in this.

Because once we have spoken, we cannot control what another person will do with the truth.

They may understand.

They may grieve.

They may become frightened.

They may think us mistaken.

They may answer with tenderness.

They may answer with silence.

They may reduce something that has cost us years of prayer and suffering to a category that seems to explain everything and understands almost nothing.

And we cannot stop them.

Perhaps this is why we sometimes continue explaining long after the truth has become clear.

We tell ourselves that we are seeking counsel.

Sometimes we are.

But sometimes we are searching for the explanation that will finally make our obedience painless to everyone we love.

There is no such explanation.

Love does not give us the power to prevent another person’s sorrow.

Truth does not guarantee that we will be understood.

And obedience to God does not come with the promise that those dearest to us will recognize it as obedience.

The desert fathers understood something severe about this.

They fled not because human relationships were worthless, but because the human heart can become desperately dependent upon being seen correctly.

We want others to know not only what we have chosen but why.

We want them to understand the years behind it.

We want them to know that we did not act impulsively.

That we tried.

That we waited.

That we sought counsel.

That we considered alternatives.

That we did not cease loving them.

And perhaps all of that should sometimes be said.

But eventually another question appears:

What if they still do not understand?

Then what?

Will I explain again?

Write another letter?

Seek another conversation?

Produce another account of myself?

Will I keep speaking until everyone carries within himself the version of me that I need him to carry?

There is no freedom there.

There is only another form of bondage.

At some point the soul must consent to something frightening:

I may be misunderstood.

Not carelessly.

Not defiantly.

Not because truth does not matter.

But because I cannot make another human being see what only God has seen from within.

God knows the hidden years.

God knows the compromises we refused and the compromises we made.

God knows where fear distorted us.

God knows where grace sustained us.

God knows the mixture in every motive.

God knows what we ourselves still do not understand.

And God does not need our explanation.

This may be one of the final forms of poverty.

To stand before those we love without possessing their understanding.

To tell the truth without demanding vindication.

To allow another person even to be disappointed in us.

To allow someone to think we are wrong.

To allow silence to follow our confession.

And not run after the silence trying to fill it.

This is very different from indifference.

Indifference says:

I do not care what you think.

Abandonment says:

I care deeply. Perhaps more deeply than you know. But I cannot make your understanding the condition of my obedience to God.

That hurts.

It should hurt.

Love without vulnerability is not love.

There may even be people to whom the truth must be spoken precisely because we love them. Not because they are entitled to every movement of the heart, but because continuing to conceal something fundamental would itself begin to deform the relationship.

Then speaking becomes an act of reverence.

And afterward comes silence.

No campaign.

No defense.

No gathering of allies.

No frantic watching for the response that will tell us whether we were right to speak.

We have spoken because truth required it.

Now the truth belongs to God.

Perhaps this is what it means to fall into the hands of the living God.

Not merely to surrender the future.

To surrender our reputation within the hearts of those we love.

To surrender the hope of being perfectly understood.

To surrender even the image of ourselves that we have spent a lifetime constructing.

And to discover beneath all of it the gaze that was there before anyone knew our name.

God knows.

God sees.

God remains.

Perhaps at the end of so much explaining, so much discerning, so much trying to find the words that will make everything comprehensible, there is only this prayer:

Lord, I consent to be known

without being understood.

I consent to tell the truth

and leave it undefended.

I consent to love those

who cannot follow me into the place

where You have met me.

I consent to their questions.

I consent to their sorrow.

I consent even to their silence.

Because beneath every human judgment

there is another gaze.

You know me.

Before the explanations.

Beneath the titles.

Beneath the failures.

Beneath everything I have been

and everything I still fear losing.

You know me.

And if, for a time, I must walk without being understood—

let that be enough.