In order to get a head start and lead the way of learning and knowing (as a Type One on the Enneagram will do) I determined
to dive into any book they might suggest as a resource for personal growth and
preparation.
To begin this summer season of “waiting” (as I am waiting on my official acceptance into Talbot Seminary, God willing, and then I will wait for school to actually start in the Fall), I picked
up the book called The Wounded Heart by Dr. Dan B. Allender and I headed out on the journey with naive expectancy.
The impact of this read was unexpectedly powerful and I found myself stumbling along the tracks of unfamiliar territory. I had to jump back and allow the shame train to pass by before I could reorient myself and gather my wits to continue on.
On page 62 is where I first met the idea that shame is like pain- it indicates a problem
which is not the suffering itself, but a deep wound which needs healing. Dr. Allender
writes these words in summary of Genesis 3: 12 which roused my anger upon
reception:
“Imagine telling the Lord God, ‘Don’t blame me. It’s not my fault; You
made [insert name your enemy here]. If You had not created [him or her], then I
would not be in this mess. It’s ultimately a failure of Your creation.
You, God, and that [person] You made are the cause of [my] fall.”
Allender goes on to suggest that the enemy for all of us is
not that person or people who have wronged and hurt us, but the enemy is sin
and shame itself.
How dare it be
suggested that the things of which I am a legitimate
victim are actually a revelation of my own independent broken separation from
God?! Excuse me? I am the victim in my story, not the sinner!
Anger! Shame!
Be still, oh my soul, and listen.
Be still, oh my soul, and listen.
What is shame abuse? It is when we allow shame to dictate our present separation from God and therefore ensure our future status as a victim of such disparity.
So I came here today to hash out why this page of the book elicited
such anger from within me. I want to grapple with it until I see my God
standing victorious in very center of the aftermath of all my emotions.
Here is how I will step back and reflect-
As I stood with my children beside a roaring train last week,
it was with both delight and terror that we felt the air rushing by as the
heavy metal clanked and the track bowed and hissed with the weight and heat of their
rushing burden.
God spoke to me through my son as we stood waiting for some simple Saturday evening fun, to see a couple trains pass by us there at the Fullerton Train
Station. We all noticed one particular homeless man because he stole our
leftovers from where we had set them just two feet away. I told him to go ahead and do take it, and he continued to
do so with a slurred sentence of thanks. We watched him hobble away on unsteady
legs.
This homeless man we encountered while standing at the train
station caused me to reflect on my own season of waiting. I am waiting for
emotional healing and I am waiting for new direction.
I am waiting to understand who I am and what it is I am
doing. I am waiting to settle into something definite. I am waiting until I can trust God with more.
And I think now of how the
many feelings which rise up during this season in my life can become deadly to
the soul when I don’t know how to approach them. This waiting can become a
platform for transportation or numbing, depending upon my approach.
My initial thought upon seeing this drunken homeless man stealing
his dinner was to simply judge- “he made very foolish choices and so he has ruined
himself. His approach to life was bad.”
But the eyes of an innocent child do not see in black and
white, which is why we are to come to our Father like little children in shades
of gray.
“Mommy, why does that man do drugs?” This was my nine year
old son.
What is this man’s story, really? Is his so different from
my own? We both know shame, that worldwide epidemic of human brokenness and
separation from God. We both long for our next spiritual meal while avoiding
the dangers of incoming emotion.
“Well, his feelings are very sad because he has a hard life,
and he doesn’t want to feel the hurt anymore. So he does drugs to turn off his
feelings. He wants to hide from his sadness.” This was the best I could do for
a quick answer to a loaded question.
“Is this because of sins, mommy?”
“Yes, son. This is because of sins. And it makes God very
sad when we hide from our feelings, because then He cannot help us.”
Oh, but shame is an exception, if I am honest. I allow shame
to enter in because it seems well-deserved and righteous. Shame points fingers
and brings momentary retribution to the wounded soul.
After all, I’m a victim,
so I have a right to feel shame or any other hurt emotion if I choose to!
…but to hide in shame is to become separated from the only One
who can heal. This is the sin of shame which hurts nobody but ourselves.
“The capacity to feel shame does not lead to change or a return to the
Creator. It leads to the opposite attempt to hide behind a bush. The natural
response of an autonomous (independent and self-reliant) heart is to hide
behind fig leaves or any convenient bush.” –Dr. Allender
Don’t we all live in this space on some level within? Who hasn’t felt shame and wanted to run and hide
from God and perhaps also the whole entire world? Those who cannot recall experiencing
such a time are the most numb of all.
To be human is to feel ashamed. To be human is to be divine. So we must bravely enter the presence of God with both parts of our selves in order to be fully known and fully loved. As Allender eloquently writes,
a glorious ruin."
When shame
has had its way with us, we are left numb and our soul goes to sleep because it
has been cut off from the lifesource of our true identity and divinity.
The aftermath of shame is a dizzying combination of intense downward
pressure and helpless weakness.
We are all victims of shame abuse.
So each of us must know that Christ is there beside us
offering a hand and asking that wonderful question with a loud voice and inquiring eyes as He
checks his pocket-watch in earnest,
“Well, ya comin’?”
What is important is not where He is going, it’s deciding to
get on.
Board the shame train?
Yes, because otherwise we will be stuck at the station for the rest of our lives, numbing ourselves to the pain with a bottle in a brown paper sack.
We can numb out our entire existence with cycles of living
that make us “happy” because they are familiar, or we can choose to board one
of those scary trains of powerful emotion and trust that He will help us
navigate the journey.
In working through The
Wounded Heart this week, I see an error in some of my reasoning about the past- I always
believed that shame was its own entity, a thing to be felt helplessly or turned
into a launching pad for either retaliation or personal victory.
I did not know it could be an indicator that I am in fact
hiding from the One I thought I was actively pursuing.
I owe most of my story to shame- without it, I would never
have had the momentum to step out and keep writing. Because what does not kill
us makes us stronger- right??
…yet what does not kill us can also cause us to hide deeper from
the truth, pushing it away and covering our wounds with numbing techniques that
are familiar and well-worn, like a drunken homeless man beside dangerous tracks
of busy human productivity.
So now I go into my week with a new thought- the feeling of shame is not a
signal that someone committed a wrong, it is a sign that we are hiding from God. Let
not these two be confused, as much as the enemy would like us to believe that
shame begins and ends with offense and must be either drowned in or ignored.
In Genesis is the first story of shame, and it tells so much
about the human condition-
Genesis
3:9-12 (NLT)
9 Then
the Lord God called to
the man, “Where are you?”
10 He
replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I
was naked.”
11 “Who told
you that you were naked?” the Lord God
asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”
12 The man
replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”
Here in the place of shame is where God’s presence is most
tangible to the sinner- the air is thick with it.
Imagine yourself hiding from God behind a bush every time
that you feel shame- actually, that is what you are in fact doing. This is what
I have done countless times, too many to count. I have said many MANY times:
Sometimes, this very enemy is even my own self. For example, the
school play which I forgot to attend because I wrote down the wrong date, so
that no loved one was in the audience to cheer for him when my son was on stage.
Here comes the shame train. A classic case of shame abuse in my soul.
I hide from You, God, because I don't want You to see that I am broken and imperfect. I am ashamed only because I am separated from You, and I am separated from You only because I have chosen to hide.
Ah, shame, how I loathe you. This relationship must end, and
so I board you cautiously and see where you take me from here, listening
carefully to the words of the Conductor so I know exactly when to get off.
I am going to leave this platform of unbroken cycles of brokenness, and the tracks will lead me to a place where I can present my whole entire wounded self before God in open humility.
Emotions can become a freight train of power and momentum
when we do not have proper perspective. And perhaps a runaway train might be a better description of what shame can feel like
within the soul, as well as the damage that shame can do to the human spirit when it is either ignored or indulged.
Shame is death, which is why it was the original gateway in
Genesis 3 for brokenness to enter our once-perfect world. So when we see the
first signal which tells us that the freight train of shame is headed our way,
the first instinct is to hide. As shame begets fear of what God might do if He
saw who we really are, it arouses our impulse to barricade ourselves from the onslaught
of emotion which appears from a distance to be a massive threat of unknown
proportions.
“It’s coming, it’s
coming! Look, Mama! There it is!”
We remember this loud train which careens down the tracks,
as it has passed by many times before, and we know the routine because we are
creatures of broken habits and fallen instincts. We live here at the station,
never getting on to travel these tracks of big emotion because we are too busy
numbing ourselves to how we truly feel.
We are the homeless vagabonds who wander around the train
station begging for handouts and keeping a safe distance from the tracks. We
don’t want to risk exposure to any potential futher injury, and we would never
dream of getting on the train should it pull up to a groaning, slowing stop
beside us. Not even the invitation of a friendly conductor could sway our
determination to remain benched, small and ashamed. For perpetual brokenness is easy to live with when it is very familiar.
No, we continue to sit on the station bench, passively
observing freight trains coming and going, keeping a safe margin between
ourselves and the familiar locomotives which could either kill us or deliver us
from this place where we are stuck. We opt instead for the bottle that sits in
a paper sack beside us, the one that contains victimization, offense,
accusation and a long list of wrongs done to us and through us.
We emotional vagabonds don’t ask for much, other than
handouts that will keep us alive in order to continue the numbing process.
There is a tiny part of us that knows we are waiting for something, but we have
forgotten what that might be. Shame keeps us hidden from others, from ourselves,
and most importantly, from God.
Most of us don’t even realize the effects of shame in our
lives because we have lived so long with it that we have become accustomed and
accepted it as quite normal. And to interrupt the homogeneous state of a life
lived in shame is to upset the normalcy of the comfortably familiar.
Who wants a God that invites us to take up a cross and learn
to die well? Only those who are ready to stop hiding and present their whole shameful self to the ministrations of the King.
And we will go to great lengths to maintain the homogeneous state of shame in which we dwell. And sometimes the reality of our pain takes momentous effort to cover up. Continues
Dr. Allender: “Shame is a dreaded, deep-seated, long-held terror come true: what
we have fear has actually come about. We’ve been found out.”
“Look, look, mommy! Here it comes!”
Shame steals our next meal while we are gazing into the
distance, anticipating the next onslaught of emotion headed our way.
And this shame does not always have to be a giant
monstrosity of power and speed, although it often is that. It can also be an
inviting passenger train which whistles pleasantly and slows down to accommodate
our weary burdens which we carry.
“Well, ya comin’?”
Remember, friends, as we learn this together: shame is not
actually a sign that you or someone else has done something wrong. Shame is a sign that you are hiding from
God.
The first time this was suggested to me I became angry. It
boiled up and I sat with it for quite some time, quietly observing what this
anger could mean.
I found that at the root of every offense, both mine and
others, is a simple choice: hide from God or stand brokenly before Him.
I think the fires of refinement are hottest for those who do
not understand what shame really means, which is why my heart has burned within
me for so very long.
And so I come before my God today, peeking out from behind
my hiding place, and I say this to Him:
“There is something You want me to understand, and I am
closer than ever to perceiving it. There is something here about shame and
enemies. Just as in Genesis, my shame is a sign that I am hiding from You. My
shame points directly back to the only real enemies of my past- not the people
that have hurt me, not the people I have hurt, but sin itself and the way it
separates me from You. Shame is a force of power which has found access to me
through the former intimate relationships with people to whom I was submissive
and vulnerable- sin used them to gain easy access to my wounded soul. When I
feel shame in thinking about that, it is not actually because of what has been done
to me or what I have done in the past, but my shame is a sign that I am hiding
from You. If I stood in Your presence, there would be no shame because it falls
away in the light of Your grace. Teach me, Jesus, as you did with the Apostle
Paul for the three years following his conversion.”
We need to put down the bottle that keeps us numb, board that
train of runaway emotions and ride it to the next stop, where Jesus will meet
us with a new identity in Him which no amount of human error can ever take from
us.
Get up off that worn out bench beside the tracks where you watched the shame train come around again and again- board it with Him and leave your numbing agents behind.
Look, a train is pulling in even now, you can feel it shaking the ground beneath your feet…
Well, friend, are you coming?
Rebecca
~*~
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