Let God Free You from Shame
Shame has afflicted humanity from the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve hid from God because they saw that they were naked, and they were ashamed.
So many of us—I’d say probably most of us—carry around a deep sense of shame and unworthiness. We are convinced that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us, that God cannot possibly love us being the horrible mess we are.
I vividly remember the bulk of my school years in Germany, which were marked by merciless bullying from the very girls I called my closest friends. We were a tight-knit clique of five, but it was clear from the start that I was the underdog. An only child, nerdy, pampered, and untrained in the art of standing up to my peers, I practically had the word “victim” stamped on my forehead.
Over the years, I was pushed into the stinging nettles on my way home from school, pelted with frozen snowballs, dunked to the point of near-drowning in the nearby lake, made fun of, put down, hung by my feet out of a third-floor window, and prank called by cute boys pretending to have a crush on me.
Once in sixth grade, C., the leader of our group, decided that we should all pick cool English nicknames. C. was Charlie, her best friend S. was Mickey, B. was Bobby, and D. was Frankie. I wanted to be Sammy, but I didn’t get to pick a name.
Fixing me with a cold stare, C. said, “I don’t think so. I think you’re Trashy.” From then on and for the rest of the school year, that was my name—and to my horror, it caught on outside our group too, with the rest of my classmates. It not only became a nickname but in a way my identity. It confirmed what I’d been told for years already: that I was worthless, garbage, the scum of the earth.
My shame and humiliation were so great that I carried this memory around for many years before I managed to tell anyone about it. Even today, it makes me cry to look at the lonely, lost little girl I was and seeing her torment and pain.
In this profound interview (link below) I stumbled across today, Chris Stefanick and spiritual counselor Carrie Daunt, daughter of the famed Catholic psychologist Bob Schucht, talk about this deep-sitting shame so many of us deal with and the ways out of it.
Carrie points out that the condemnation we feel never comes from God. It’s the enemy trying to make us feel like we don’t belong… that there’s no way God could love someone as broken and messed up as us… and that we are the only ones who are and feel this way.
In the video, Chris Stefanick tells a heart-warming story of one of his own children, a boy, who found an old phone with a cracked screen and, using it, got hooked on online pornography at a very young age. He eventually confessed, ashamed and tearful, by writing a note to his mother, Chris’s wife Natalie. As he handed it to her, he said, “Here, Mom, I’ll be over there hiding in the closet until you’re done reading it.”
His mother said, “No. I want you to sit here in my presence and watch my face, so you can see that I still love you while I read this note.”
Chris actually breaks down crying as he tells this beautiful story. This, he and Carrie agree, is what God wants us to know: I love you no matter what. I love you in the shame and the messiness. Don’t hide from me. Let me see it all, your brokenness, your woundedness, the dirt on your hands and the scars on your heart.
What a great message… and what a relief.
If you have ever dealt with shame (or maybe still do), I urge you to watch this video.
Satan wants to keep us hiding, isolated, and in despair. The way out is openness, vulnerability, sharing. Because that’s when we realize two things: that we are not alone in our pain; and that we don’t have to be perfect to be loved by God.
God bless you!
P.S. If you feel generous, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support me with a few bucks a month. I’d really appreciate it. If you got this in your inbox, you can simply click the “Upgrade to Paid” button at the bottom of the email. Right now, I’m getting ready to turn Diary of a Stumbling Saint into a book, so the more time I can devote to that, the sooner it’ll be published. My paid subscribers will get an early sneak peek at the book cover and other inner-circle goodies. Thanks in advance!