In our home, we have a sign above the arch that welcomes our guests into our living room. It’s small, but every letter is capitalized, shouting, “COME AS YOU ARE.” I bought it without really appreciating its significance. I didn’t yet realize that this is what it means to be a friend. I didn’t yet understand what it means to have a friend in Jesus.

Unintentionally, I had kept Him at arm’s length. I don’t think I really knew how to come as I was. How could He be more to me than Lord and Savior? Was there room for my questions? Was there a place for my doubt? Could I really stop pretending that life would always work out?

Then, one day, the dam broke. Thankfully, I was home alone—a rarity. I had just learned that someone I knew was getting something I had wanted for years. It wasn’t something you could buy. It was a dream come true for them.

I felt anger flood my veins and immediately raised my hands in the air and slammed them on the kitchen counter. As my eyes welled up with tears and my throat filled with rage, I roared into the empty kitchen, “Why, Lord? Why do You forget me? Where are You?”

Months before, my therapist had asked me when the last time was that I’d had a completely unfiltered conversation with the Lord. At first, I countered her challenge with a reply of disbelief: “I’m nothing but honest.” After thinking about it, I realized that just wasn’t true.

I had harbored a lot of thoughts: frustration with the injustice of losing relationships and discouragement over the way my past was still very much impacting my life. I felt like I carried the weight of the world and like God had done very little to restore what was shattered. I knew I had these expectations for what I wanted my life to look like and disappointment that it didn’t.

I had been holding back. I persisted under false pretenses instead of sharing the truth. I didn’t want Jesus to leave me. I thought I could fake it until I made it. I had been told that I was too much, so why would it be any different with the Lord?

When I finally expressed my distress and dismay, I realized Christ hadn’t moved any farther from me than where I had put Him myself.

In fact, it was with my honesty and an open heart that, for the first time, I felt His loving presence.

We can get it wrong. We can think our friendship with Christ is contingent on us. But He chose us. He befriended us. He shows up for us. Even when we’re a mess.

His faithfulness is part of who He is. Even when we’re not faithful, He is.

To be anything else would be to deny Himself. His friendship wraps itself around us like a security blanket. Under His cover, we can show up as we are because He will never leave.

There’s nothing like the feeling of revealing the truest and most vulnerable parts of yourself and being loved instead of scorned, held instead of rejected, pursued instead of abandoned, and favored instead of forgotten. Christ doesn’t just move toward us, pursuing us. He intercedes for us.

In a room we cannot yet inhabit, Jesus advocates for us and prays for us, “Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and He is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us” (Romans 8:34).

We let His compassion for us inform the compassion we should have for ourselves and for others. We let it become the framework in which we can befriend ourselves—treating our souls as people to be loved.

Adapted from Loyal in His Love: An Invitation to Be Held by Jesus When Others Let You Go by Tabitha Panariso

For deeper reflection, listen to Romans 8 today!

Be inspired to come as you are on today’s her Story Podcast with Tabitha!