By SARAH DAVIS
Shame has a way of spreading through the soul like mold spreads through a house. Shame is different than guilt. It isn’t just feeling remorse or regret about an event in your life, like when our internal moral compass tells us we are in the wrong and indicates a course correction should take place. Shame is the feeling that you are bad and that there is something inherently wrong with you.
My husband encountered a recent disaster on the job site of a large and beautiful home in which he was working. There was a knob that broke off of a sink, followed by substantial volumes of water sprayed at high pressure. Picture a fire hose opened at full throttle in your Pinterest version of a refinished laundry room. The water damage was extensive, leaking through to the ceiling of a finished basement and requiring the ceiling to be ripped out and dried for hours upon hours with industrial fans. Without going to the length of ripping out the ceiling, there was a strong likelihood that mold would spread quickly in the dark and concealed spaces beneath it.
I have come face to face with shame in my own life and have fought my way through the trenches of rediscovering my worth. I had to take a painful look at what was growing beneath the ceiling of my heart. It has been a long journey, and through that process, I have learned to identify shame in the lives of others because pain recognizes pain.
I want to be that reminding voice to others that even though you have made some mistakes in life, you are not a mistake.
In Luke chapter 15, we see the story of the prodigal son who has left home and disgraced his family. When he comes to his senses and returns home, his father sees him coming from a long way off and pulls up his robe and runs to him. The father knew that if someone else were to get to his son first, they might beat him, send him away, or publicly humiliate him. He ran to his son to spare him the shame.
We have a father who runs to us. We have a father who will stop at nothing to restore you to your position as the beloved. He tears down ceilings and runs to get to you first so He can absorb the shame.
FOR FURTHER THOUGHT During that time of confronting shame in my own life, I had to learn that if God is capable of forgiving me of my sins and past mistakes, then I could learn to forgive myself, too. When your perception of God is one that believes the lie that He is still holding your past against you, it naturally causes you to distance yourself and to turn away from Him rather than to Him. This reminder in the story of the prodigal son has been deeply healing in my own life of how the Father demonstrates His love for us even when we’ve made a mess of things. When you’re feeling unloved, unworthy or rejected, picture God running toward you, arms wide open, ready to love you through to a better place.
PRAYER Father, thank you for running to us. Thank you for absorbing the shame so we don’t have to. Help us to be people who do the same to those we encounter in life. Help us to love so radically that it heals and transforms and silences the shame. May our lives tell this love story written with each of us in mind.
