Shame: a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. ¹

I had been tossing around this word in my mind for months when I came across a book that painted the picture in a way that my soul had been longing to see it. This too shall Last, Finding Grace when suffering lingers – K.J. Ramsey The fact is, this book had been sitting on my shelf for the past 16 months and yes, I went to my “past orders” tab to search when I purchased this book and I was shocked to see it was that long ago. In fact I was so taken aback I blinked a moment and checked again. 16 months, 16 months of life had passed between when I ordered this book and when I read it. This then made me think back to what was happening in my life 16 months ago to make me order it. Was it something someone recommended to me? Did I see it on social media? I don’t know but what I do know is that God’s timing is always perfect.

For the past couple years when surrounded by certain people, acquaintances, or even strangers there were tinges of fear and shame that overwhelmed me that when certain subjects came up I wanted to slink into the background and literally hope that everyone in the room forgot that I existed. I became the master of changing subjects, well timed phone calls or even flat out excusing myself from conversations purely for self preservation. I went from the person who would always message back or call back as soon as possible to avoiding the fated “ding” or ringtone because I couldn’t stand the idea of tiptoeing into the realm of explaining my life again. I stepped out of life group, away from serving and hid in the shadows never knowing exactly why, until it was summed up in this:

Shame, is the primary tool evil uses to disrupt and disconnect our relationships, our stories, our communities, and our world² It is the felt sense that I am bad, there really is something wrong with me, and I don’t matter to anyone else³ Shame is the stealthy, compelling energy evil is constantly using to distract us from living in the story where grace is here.⁴

I was allowing the shame in my life to drive a wedge between everything that I had known. The relationships that I had built, the people God had put in my life and it was even starting to drive a wedge between me and God himself. I was sure that I would end up alone, sitting in my pit of shame because no one understood, no one was going to listen and most importantly no one cared.

That’s the thing about this stupid 5 letter word, it hijacks us, it feeds endless lies into our hears and minds to paint the picture that went something like this in my mind:

I stood in a storefront, like they used to have in the 80’s, all decorated, when I was younger it was Fredrick & Nelson but that detail doesn’t matter. What mattered was that I had a whole life in there, everything was laid out. Timelines, facts, events, the truth but no matter who walked by, no one could see me. It was infuriating because as people I knew walked by the storefront of my life, I could see them looking in, even almost making eye contact with me but instead they looked past my face, as though I didn’t exist and the facts, the story lines and the truth, laid out before them didn’t make sense because they couldn’t hear the words that came from my mouth, they couldn’t see or hear me. I would try and scream in hopes that the panes of the glass were just too thick but still, nothing. I was abandoned, I was unlovable I was alone and headed to a destitute place of screaming silence into the wind in hopes that eventually a whisper would land on someones ear. Shame had boxed me into a place where I was disconnected, self protecting and completely detached.

I thought I had surrounded myself with a community of people where shame could not live but what I was starting to realize was the enemy took all the positive thoughts and conversations that I had up and to that point and it’s like he had wiped them from my memory bank, all in the name of shame. He was taking all the fears of my adult life and ripping open old wounds to expose them to new dirt, purely for the purpose of bringing me into deeper moments of solitude.

The truth is, however, we were never made to be that way. We were never created to sit in a place of screaming through a display window hoping for someone to hear us. There is a Creator who hears everything. He sees everything. He saw it as it transpired and placed people in our paths who are willing and ready to hear the cries of our heart but shame keeps us behind the curtain in hopes that we will forget about the truth. Shame convinces us that there is no one, ever who will be willing to love, understand, sit in the pit and hear our cries. We are left feeling as though we are the worst human being on the planet. How could I get myself here, again? How could I let this happen? How did this happen? How will anyone ever see me as anyone other than __________ (enter whatever negative name you have for yourself here).

The further deepening of the wound is that even when we are ready to pull back the curtain of shame or the window pane of silence, we tiptoe into the realm of the unknown where every answer, even if correct, we question, fear, write off, don’t believe, hide behind or run away from any perceived level of grace and love that we may feel from another human being. We have lived inside the sanctuary of shame for so long that anything other than that leaves us feeling naked, ashamed, vulnerable and fearful.

So I sit here today to say, shame on me (if you know what I mean) for not bringing the truth to light and instead hiding behind it for so long. The beauty is, however, that there IS good in this world. There IS a God who loves and cares so much more than I could ever imagine that in the midst of my shame and deep fear, He was knitting together a community of people who either had been through the same thing or they had simply been gifted with the ability to sit in the pit, to share love wrapped in empathy and to show that grace and truth still had a place in my life. Most importantly there began a moment where I realized that bringing the truth to light, even though it was terrifying, it no longer allowed a place for shame to take over my mind. Instead in honesty and exposure, in being seen in our sadness and despair, that we’ll most clearly see the truth that we’re still living in a story of love.⁵ That story, my friends, is written by the most complete and loving author there is, who sees all, knows all and has already written the next chapter. It’s time to step out from behind the veil of shame and into the sunlight of truth and love.

1. Oxford Languages ↩︎
2. The Soul of Shame (24)- Curt Thompson ↩︎
3. I thought it was just me (But it isn’t) (13)- Brene Brown ↩︎
4. This too shall last (49)- K.J. Ramsey ↩︎
5. This too shall last (55) – K.J. Ramsey ↩︎