The Impenetrable Armor of Self-Protection

The problem with armor is that while it’s meant to self-protect, it often ends up keeping away what we desire most because we forget to take it off. When you’re going into battle, armor is necessary and life-saving. But when the danger has passed, it should be removed. Unfortunately, most people, myself included, become so comfortable in their armor that we keep away the very thing we’ve been longing and fighting for.

In Daring to Lead, by Brene Brown, she says, “At the center of all our elaborate personal security measures and protection schemes lies the most precious treasure of the human experience: the heart…It’s the universal metaphor for our capacity to love and be loved, and it’s the symbolic gateway to our emotional lives.”

In an effort to protect our hearts, our impenetrable armor soon becomes our self-destructive prison. I’m not sure when I first started to forge my armor,  but I know it was at a young age. Growing up with a loving, but mostly absent father and a caring, but overstressed mother dealing with raising two children alone sounded the alarm almost daily for me to take cover and self-protect.

With each assault, I retreated deeper into my mind where it was safe. So I thought. And sometimes it was. But it was also an echo chamber for all the negative thoughts and ideas I already believed about myself from the “evidence” in my life. I’m not wanted. I’m not important. I’m not loved. I’m not good enough.

Hunkering down in my armor wasn’t all bad. In fact, it’s where I found my voice and courage to express my thoughts and feelings through writing. You can say, it’s where I loosened my armor so my heart could breathe. I found peace and safety as I wrote in my diary, mostly to Jesus who had become my best friend. I remember being about ten years old singing songs to him as I played in the backyard alone. I knew he would never leave me or reject me like family and friends. It was a sad and lonely time, but also a beautiful and safe time as I continued to forge my armor and grow in my faith.

Growing up I always felt like the outsider in my extended family and among my friends. Always there, standing at the edge of the group, but never really present and engaged because I was battling all the negative thoughts of feeling unworthy, unloved, or unwanted because of all the rejection my heart had already suffered. I wonder how my own insecurity and lies played a part in my self-fulfilling prophecy of not being wanted? How my own armor to protect myself actually separated me from people that may have truly wanted to include me? Looking back, I see I was suited up to self-protect against the world, and yet I was becoming my biggest threat.

But I didn’t know it then. Even if I did, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to take off my armor, so writing became a new fortress I inhabited. I cringe at all the angsty teenage poems about unrequited love and longing to be wanted and dreamed about my future husband who I would live with happily ever after. (And we all know how that turned out.) The funny thing is, is how could anyone love me when I had armored up and retreated to safety away from everyone? But it was easier and safer to show up in life with armor on, protected from life’s assaults I knew would come from people in my life. Because they always did. It was safer to long for something I didn’t have, than risk being hurt again.

I had been wounded so many times before, I couldn’t afford to expose my most precious and vulnerable parts again, especially my heart. It was just too risky, so I protected it from pain and rejection, but also from love and acceptance which I desperately longed for.

Brene Brown says, “Wholeheartedness captures the essence of a fully examined emotional life and a liberated heart, one that is free and vulnerable enough to love and be loved. And a heart that is equally free and vulnerable to be broken and hurt.”

I’ve been on a quest for wholeheartedness these last several years and I love that it’s opened me up to love and be loved, however, the last part scares me. I don’t want my heart to be broken or hurt, but I don’t want it to be locked away alone forever, so I’m learning to take off my armor piece by piece. I’m learning who I can trust with the tender parts of me, and who I need to suit up against and still be present and enjoy the moment for what it is.

It takes courage and discernment to risk loving and being loved. Armor is important and meant for protection, but when the danger has passed, when the war is over, it’s time to take it off. The goal is learning not to strip off your armor and stand there naked and exposed for just anyone, but to embrace victory and celebrate with those still standing by your side.