Last Thoughts on Shame

Shame and all its accouterments will circle wagons around us if we don’t break the negative cycle. Remember, it is one of the enemy’s favorite tools to keep us from walking in our designed call.

I want to encourage you, loved one, wrestling with these negative cycles does not mean you are not an overcomer! Jacob wrestled with God, David wrestled with his flesh, and the Apostle Paul repeatedly implored the Lord to deliver him from a recurring struggle. We are in good company!

The Lord is calling us to wake up and shed all that entangles and entraps us. The things we overcome will be the foundation and launching pad for our destiny. What you accept, you will learn to adapt, then you will eventually conform to it until you are willing to confront it.”

Your giant will take you if you don’t take them. Life is defined by what you conquer, or by what you DON’T conquer.

“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing (including shame), shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:37-38

Shame

I will never forget the news footage and pictures of victims running through the streets like phantoms from a horror movie when the twin towers fell in 2001. White ash and debris clung to their anguished faces, their clothes devoid of any color but that of the soot and dust.

Spiritually, I could identify with these precious souls. For over a decade it felt I was climbing out of the ruins of a life with ash and soot clinging to me like wet garments; or wet grave cloths as it were.

I couldn’t shake this caked-on feeling in my soul, so I asked the Holy Spirit to show me what was clinging to me after all these years. I’d forgiven. I’d let go. I’d even gone through deliverance (now that takes commitment!). Yet in my soul I felt sticky residue. After a time of listening, I sensed the phrase, “stale shame.”

So I guess this means that stale grief has a cousin!

There are two kinds of shame:

·    Well-placed shame (or conviction). This is due to one’s sin or wrong doing; an appropriate response followed by correcting the wrong.

·    Mis-placed shame. This happens when we take upon ourselves shame that has nothing to do with our own actions or sin; a dishonoring of God that we did not have a hand in. This is self-centered shame.

Apparently, while in the rubble of my life, I’d donned grave cloths of shame and they became stale. I read somewhere that much of what makes us feel shame is not that we dishonor God by our actions, but that we failed to give the appearance that other people admire.

Ouch.

Misplaced shame happened to Jesus and to Paul. The crowd called Jesus a temple-destroyer. They called Paul mad when he defended himself in court and even called him an enemy. In other words, I was in good company.

The Lord gave me a prescription for this shame – but you will have to read on in the next post for it. (Marketing 101, make them come back for more).

”O Lord you brought my soul up from the grave;

You have kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit.”

Psalms 30:3

Cinderella Complex and the StraitJacket

“In my own little corner, in my own little chair I can be whatever I want to be.” (Cinderella, 1965)

Cinderella was always my favorite Disney movie. So when my therapist suggested I imagine a “safe room” for my bruised and battered emotions, this song danced it’s way across my psyche. 

In my “safe room” I had a bed, a nice rug in the center and a lovely breakfast nook in the corner. A fireplace in the center of one wall was a nice touch – after all, memories get cold once in a while. But the two most notable features (to me AND my therapist) was the front and back door. The front door was the kind I saw in movies. You know, the ones where the upper half of the door and the bottom half were split so you can chat with your neighbor while cooling a pie on the window ledge? (cue Leave it to Beaver music here).

The second thought-provoking feature was the back door. It led to a lovely meadow and forest. My therapist’s head tilted to one side, “hmmmmm, interesting.” 

“Because… ?” I asked.

He pursed his lips while looking at my drawing, “I have never had anyone draw a back door before.” 

So does this make me brilliant, fascinating, or ready for a straitjacket? I thought it might be wise to keep that thought to myself so I just said, “Oh, really?” 

“Well,” he explained. “This is supposed to be your safe room. Your front door is split so you can let people in just so far, and since you have a back door, this tells me that even in your safe place, you feel the need for an escape route.” 

I had buried pain so deep and had so many trust issues that even my safe room had an escape route! 

Well, this explained a few things. I wondered if a medium size straitjacket would fit.

In order to climb out of this cavern, I needed to learn to trust my Heavenly Father to light the way. His Word was a constant torch and guide on my journey.

“For in the time of trouble, He shall hide me in His Pavilion. 

In the secret place of His tabernacle, He shall hide me.

He shall set me high upon a rock.” Psalm 27:5

The Gift of Pain, Part I

To everything there is a season. A time for every purpose under heaven…Ecclesiastes 3:1

Christmas is coming. Have you noticed it arrives quicker every year? I remember as a kid the anxious anticipation of gazing at my packages under the tree and keeping my hands in my robe pockets for fear they would find their way to the ribbon before breakfast. That was a hard and fast rule in our house. Absolutely NO opening packages until we’d had breakfast.

Before I was able to figure out a gift by its shape and the way it rattled, I would tear into each one thinking “this is the gift I asked for,” or “I bet this is the toy I wanted.” Then with great disappointment, I found socks - or my personal favorite - underwear. I didn’t care that it was practical. I didn’t care that I needed it. It wasn’t what I’d wanted or hoped for.

Pain is a lot like that. It isn’t what we want. It isn’t what we’d hoped for. But it is sometimes necessary.

And it is a gift.

I had a teacher in middle school I never liked, Mr. Fowler. He was old, grumpy, he never smiled, and he wore a bow tie. Yes…a bow tie. Every day. He was my math teacher so it was a subject I already hated, so Mr. Fowler made it more…hateful. But he was a patient, long-suffering instructor. He would work with me until I understood. He wanted me to untangle a problem, understand, and learn. Mr. Fowler was a gift to a little girl that didn’t understand math.

Pain is like that. We hate it. We don’t want it. We try to run from it. But pain, like Mr. Fowler, is a perfect instructor. There are many examples in the Word of our Father using pain to instruct His children and not because He is mean or grumpy. Sometimes our own disobedience or a bad choice brings it on, or even situations we have no part in, like the death of a loved one or a job lay-off.

Whatever the circumstance, pain is an unwelcome friend and an effective instructor enclosed in a package we must unwrap sometimes. Why? 

Because it brings correction when needed, direction when sought, focus and clarity when pressed into; It gets our attention, and that is just the beginning.

Abba's Child

I started a new therapy with my counselor called Life Integration Therapy. Being a Christian, she does things a little differently and invites the Holy Spirit into the session to help build these broken pieces in your brain from many years of trauma.

It kinda kicks your butt.

I did ok until the adult me had to tell the infant me, just birthed and wrapped in a receiving blanket, what her life was going to be like. I totally lost it. I don’t want to tell this innocent, precious baby that her life would be filled with molestation, an alcoholic father with rages, suicide, lying, deceit, shame, divorce and many years of pain and regret.

How do you tell a child this is what their life will be like? How can you do that to any one let alone an innocent child?

It’s not fair.

I have several girlfriends, the dearest ladies in the world to me, who have had blessed lives. A good, solid upbringing with healthy fathers, good husbands filled with integrity, safe homes, ministry without shame, marriage without betrayal, the works in my book. Then I look at my life and I feel like a little girl watching her Daddy hand beautiful gifts to her sisters - new, pristine party dresses, china dolls with silk curls, warm, soft coats with fur around the collar. And I get a beat up, second-hand doll.

Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful for two AMAZING children and a lovely home and a job I love; but there is still a little girl in me with dreams and hopes, that is looking at a second-hand doll. I don’t want to tell the baby me that this is what her life will feel like.

I know God can and does make beautiful china dolls out of gauze and yarn; however the child in me is having a good old-fashioned pity party. I’ve heard the catch phrases of the decade saying we need to “heal the child within” and now I get it. Except this child is sulking in the corner with a torn up doll at her feet watching her sisters twirl in their party dresses to the delight of all who watch.

I know. I need an attitude adjustment. But this is where the child me is today. I refuse to stay here. It is too exhausting! Sulking takes work! The brow must stay furrowed (causes caverns in middle-aged skin), the lips must maintain a constant pout (although they do look like they’ve had some silicone in them this way), and the arms have to remain crossed (well that isn’t so bad, it gives you cleavage).

It’s still tiring. Maybe I need a nap.

Shards of Light

It’s been so long since my last entry; a lifetime in blog-world. It seems I have lived a lifetime in the real world too. Since Bingeing and Purging, I’ve become a divorced woman/new homeowner - both very scary things.

Within the span of a year my life has taken more dips and dives than a trick pilot. On September 1, I became a single woman after nearly 25 years of marriage. It is amazing the feeling of a 25-year-weight being lifted off one’s shoulders with a thump of a judge’s stamp. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t easy. I liken the divorce hearing to pulling out one’s intestines through the navel. Despite the ripping pain, when the aftermath subsided, there was a lightness that I’d not felt in a long time.

I didn’t realize how exhausting it is to wrestle oneself into submission in a marriage where one partner is consistently sabotaging the foundation.

The last few weeks have been like walking through a deep cavern without any visible shadow on the path of suffocating blackness. God’s Word was the only shards of light to guide me through this pervasive darkness; that and the broad shoulders of a few girlfriends known to me as DSTN and TWaD (long story) and the prayers of many friends and family. If any of you are reading this, bless you. I wouldn’t be sane without you.

I now enter the next phase of my journey to discover Abba’s Child as a “single woman.” A single woman wedded to Christ. What an honor to be His bride! I truly feel a honeymoon phase in my relationship with Him. After all, there is no other man competing with His affections, no other man to seek council from, and no other man to fulfill those quiet places within my soul.

Just my Jesus.

How sweet it is!

I still wrestle with guilt, but it subsides as I study what the Word says about divorce. I’m not talking just reading the Bible as is…I’m talking going back to the original Hebrew and Greek along with the divorce traditions of the time. What a difference it makes! So many churches and denominations wreck havoc on the abused seeking divorce to end the pain and bondage. As if heaping guilt and condemnation on the wounded will bring healing!

The night of the divorce, I sat before my Bible exhausted and unable to decide where to seek my solace in His Word. I did what I haven’t done in years. I asked the Lord to take me to a place in His Word just for me. I desperately needed to hear that He was close and knew my heart. I closed my eyes and opened my Bible to where it just happened to land.

Isaiah 14:3, “It shall come to pass in the day the Lord gives you rest from your sorrow, and from your fear, and the hard bondage in which you were made to serve…”

He knows.

He understands.

He heals.

The "C" Word

My new friend, the childlike part of me, had a serious jolt today by that dreaded word “Cancer” invading my safe place. The mother that brought me forth, gave me life, nurtured, cuddled, and kissed away ouchies has bladder cancer. What a horrible word. It is treatable, thank the Lord, but it is scary nonetheless and makes me realize how fragile these gifts, parents, are to us.

The newly-found child within me wanted to run from these new shadows imprinted on my walls. Not now, Lord. Not now when I so desperately need her nurturing, cuddles, and to kiss away my new ouchies.

As I helped her with her catheters and showering I was seized by shifting circumstances. Just 40+ years ago she was doing much the same for me (minus the catheter). Being this intimate with my mother brings such a vulnerability to our relationship. There is a sweet sadness to it, if that makes sense.

I am catapulted back to my insecurities as a little one in this house. Fear of abandonment was a big thing with me. Don’t know why, really. My mom was a stay-at-home mom while dad was a hero fighting fires. I remember having nightmares of my mom leaving me in a car in a parking lot and having large statues (one looked remarkably like the Statue of Liberty) fall on the car. It was a recurring dream and I’ve never discovered its significance. I always attributed it to the usual childhood fears.

That same fear whispered in my ear today - abandonment. Just when I need my mom most. Am I really this narcissistic? My mother is battling cancer and I’m worried about being abandoned. The adult in me knows that she has a 70% chance of beating this…a good odd in today’s cancer percentages. But the child in me sees her locking me in the car, walking away, and statues falling in slow motion.

I was hoping to connect with the Dana-child that danced endlessly and sang at the top of her voice putting on shows for anyone willing to sit in the same room. Not this Dana-child. I wanted to find the Dana-child that was completely soaked in her emotions, giving in to them at will. Not the teen-adult Dana that was told her feelings and perceptions about abuse were wrong and sick.

In Brennan Manning’s book, Abba’s Child (is anyone tired of me quoting this new favorite toy?) said, “To ignore, repress, or dismiss our feelings is to fail to listen to the stirrings of the Spirit within our emotional life. The Son of Man did not scorn or reject feelings as fickle and unreliable. They were sensitive emotional antennae to which He listened carefully and through which He perceived the will of His Father for congruent speech and action.”

What a concept!! To actually stop an abuser in their assault before any damage is done. To tell a husband early on that stealing is wrong and lying is an abomination to a marriage. To stomp one’s adult-foot and say “Get out” if sin is a continual threat to the family.

If I had grasped this 35+ years ago until now I wonder how different I’d be.

I wonder where I’d be.

I read somewhere that if a brook did not have rocks in it the water would lose its song.

I guess that just means that this child within and the adult without have a lot of singing to do!

The Imposter

I am an imposter. I freely admit it.

How embarrassing.

All these years I’ve thought I was something I was not. I hear your collective gasps. I know, I know. How can this be?

I didn’t realize it until I read the description of an imposter in the book, Abba’s Child.1

An Imposter:
• Is rooted in fear of human disapproval.
• Is afraid of abandonment, losing support, and not able to cope on their own.
• Is preoccupied with acceptance and approval.
• Needs to please others.
• Is often incapable of direct speech, hedging, waffling, and remains silent out of fear of rejection.
• Demands to be noticed and craves compliments. (I don’t care about compliments so much…just hand me a stage and a spotlight).
• Draw their identity from achievements and interpersonal relationships.
• Operates out of a fear-based center.

It explains a lot actually. Manning goes on to say, “The false self was born when as children we were not loved well or were rejected or abandoned.” My imposter was born that fateful day at poolside when demanded to unclothe.

Most of the time, my imposter covered itself/herself by means of chronic day dreaming. Now I’m really confessing my youthful sin. You see, this was my coping device. Like an alcoholic uses alcohol or a drug addict their drug, mine was getting lost in a world no one could see. No one could hurt me there. I created a wonderful place that I was in complete control.

I’m a big girl now (with a little girl still hiding in me) and I still haunt my old hidden world. Only now I try to use it for the good of the writer in me in the form of fiction. So, in a way, I took what the enemy used to keep me bound and I brought it into the light for the Lord to use for His purpose.

I guess you’d say I redeemed it.

Manning also states, “When we accept the truth of what we really are and surrender it to Jesus Christ, we are enveloped in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace.” I covet this new world of peace. For decades I’d rebuked myself time and again for running to my trusted vice as if it was an evil sin. But now, I believe it was a gift from the Lord. I actually had a therapist tell me, after hearing my life chronicled in a painful diatribe, that my coping instrument probably kept me out of the looney bin (that is a medical term).

I must embrace this imposter as a part of myself and accept her for the place she held all these years. I think we should make friends with these imposters as they are a part of ourselves. To continually rebuke them is a form of self-hatred. Perhaps titles and imposters do have a place for a season…until we find our true self that is.

1Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning, NavPress, 2002.

Come Out, Come Out Wherever I am!!

This journey to shed oneself is painful.

I don’t like it.

But it is necessary if I want to really KNOW not only who I am, but who my new Husband and Abba is. Where did that little girl go? I remember her as being a bit of a tomboy, very verbose (my parents would say CONSTANTLY chatty), very strong-minded (my parents would say stubborn), and quite unconcerned with what others thought of my favorite tennis shoes with holes in them, the fact that I hated to comb my hair, or my muddy lizards named Cinderella (I named them all Cinderella…I don’t know why).

Where did she go? (Me not Cinderella) I think she went in to hiding the first time my father asked me to skinny dip in front of him. I vividly remember arguing with him, telling him “That’s sick! I will NOT do that. It is wrong!” I will never forget how I felt when he yelled back at me, “Well if you think it is wrong, then YOU are the sick one.”

I didn’t want to be the sick one. I wanted to be like every other tween/teen. I argued with dad some more, but the little girl retreated behind a wall and only peaked out to quietly proclaim her right to keep her clothes on. More words, more retreating…until finally the little girl was gone.

It wasn’t until I was in my thirties and my dad committed suicide that the impact of what he did really reached my soul and burned a hole right through it. For the majority of my life I didn’t want to be the “sick one”, so I gave in to just about every dysfunctional relationship that surrounded me. Financial and emotional abuse in my marriage, spiritual abuse in the church, and that never-ending fear of what people thought of me.

I think I’ve spent many of these dysfunctional years either wondering where God was or projecting on to God’s personality that of my abusers. I have seen Him in my minds-eye as a strict, harsh, disciplinarian who only gives us wonderful things when we do everything right or when we don’t sin “too much”. I’ve never really understood grace the way Christ intended it to be.

I want to.

I want to embrace it with the tenacity of a pit bull in a fight to the death. I want to understand and KNOW the Love of God in such a way that I don’t…no…I can’t waver when some pious, religious, self-righteous or just plain mis-guided Christian tries to explain why my decision to end my marriage is sinful. I don’t want to hear the continual recorder going round and round in my head saying, “You are the sick one,” when someone doesn’t understand or see the complete brokenness and inability to stand up and take it in my marriage because a chronic deceiver said, “I’m sorry,” one more time.

When I consider the judgment I will get when news of the divorce gets out, it is the same fear that rises in me when I heard those fateful words as a young girl. I don’t know why I think of those words, but I do. This is why the little girl hides.

I love what Brennan Manning says in his book, Abba’s Child. “Christians who remain in hiding continue to live the lie. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others. We cling to our bad feelings and beat ourselves with the past when what we should do is let go.”

I have utterly and completely forgiven my dad for everything. How do I know this? Because, after I run to my Jesus, I want to run into the arms of my dad and tell him how much I love and missed him. Because when I think of him now, a sweet reminiscent smile graces my face.

You see, he was a frightened little boy retreating behind a wall only to peak out to quietly proclaim his right to not get beat in the garden shed by his dad. That is how I see him now. That is how Jesus saw him thirty five years ago.

Now…I’m off to find that little girl and bring her from behind the wall.

Come out, Come out, wherever you are!