Scripture: Romans 5:1-5
Journal: Where in your life are you still a prisoner to shame? What does freedom from shame look like? How does that happen? Will you move toward
freedom form shame today?
Reflection:
When shame has the chance to burrow its way
into a soul’s most sensitive yet unprotected places, that person finds it hard
to be seen up close by anyone, including God, without a fretful impulse to turn
away, to avert the eyes, to flee from the vulnerable familiarity love
invites. Shame’s victims believe
everybody sees them the way they see themselves: as unredeemable, undeserving of
being taken seriously, certainly unworthy of being loved, fiercely wary and
painfully incapable of even taking a chance on love themselves. Shame is the contaminated ground in which the
seeds of emotional self-destruction take deep root.
People who travel with shame
as their companion fear exposure more than anything else. The mere possibility of having one’s
defectiveness abruptly seen by another evokes a panic so pervasive and
terrifying that it can’t even be acknowledged, much less faced, disarmed, and
finally embraced in sustained moments of God’s extravagant, compassionate
grace.
Such individuals are driven
to live in hiding, out of sight—from God, from others, from self. Alienation like this converts shame from
feeling into a way of life in which people become their shame. In the process, a person falls into line
behind Adam and Eve, waiting nervously for the inevitable expulsion from Eden’s
garden, a cold-blooded excommunication from life.
Shame is the spirit that
works overtime to stop God’s love in its tracks, turning the possibility of
love into an unattainable dream that’s finally and sadly abandoned. It also keeps people from honoring and
enjoying the instinctive desire to be desired, to be seen as worthwhile, to
experience oneself as God's beloved. And
shame fills individuals with resentment and rage against those who seem to find
love, significance, and personal safety with so little apparent effort.
Shame and I were longtime
companions, and hard experience has taught me that silent contemplation alone
emboldens one’s soul to reach out in hope to the Cross, our one sure path to
safe, nurturing, holy ground.
Contemplation shows us that God is nothing like us: although we may turn
away from God, others, and self in shame, God never turns away from us. In fact, contemplation’s silent glance turns
out to be the fertile ground in which God’s redeeming love takes root. In this safe place we start to see by being
seen as worthwhile, by knowing that we matter.
Slowly learning to trust
enough to be seen by God as lovable—to be held in God’s healing gaze—is what
can finally lure us out of hiding, out of the shadows and into the warming
light of God’s creative love. It’s
almost like being led back to Eden and discovering that God never wanted us to
leave in the first place. We were
expelled because we learned, or perhaps better, were taught to believe the lies
that instilled shame. In contemplation’s
soul-sculpting silence we learn to trust the healing truth of our worth and
lovableness. (The Grace of Mattering: Safety from Shame by Joe McHugh, Weavings,
Volume XXXI, Number 4, Aug/Sept/Oct 2016)
Prayer
Closing
Prayer: Jesus,
we cry out for freedom today—freedom in our ongoing struggles with shame, both
the shame we feel and the shame we give. Though our guilt has been completely
taken care of by your work on the cross, Jesus, we still feel varying degrees
of shame, and we act out in a variety of destructive ways. We need grace upon
grace—a deeper healing, a greater liberation.
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