“When you’re down & discouraged, I can not get to you.” These were the words of a long time friend several years ago when I was in a hard and discouraging place. This was not an unknown place for me because I had been there many times before in my life. When I get in that place, I hide from people so they cannot know or see my heart. My friend’s revealing words were not about making me feel shame, but her words did reveal how I go to shame when I am afraid people will not stay around if they really see me.
It seems like when we are at our lowest, ugliest, darkest, and when we feel “less than,” we tend to pull away. Where do we go? And Why?
If it is true that we long to be known, why is it that we go away and hide until we can come out looking appropriate or like what Chuck DeGroat calls “a glittering Image.”
Years ago when my friend said she could not get to me, I did feel shame thinking I was a bad person. I did not hear the invitation that my friend extended to come closer, nor did did I realize I was being invited to know something of the Father’s relentless love for me.
Shame is a powerful thing. It often leads us to believe we are unacceptable, unlovable and feeling like a failure that will never measure up. Shame’s mission is to destroy our image bearing soul. It wants us to live behind the lies that distort beauty and strength. Shame turns inward and beckons us into isolation, and I have come to know that isolation is the place where shame loves to live.
My friend wanted to create a safe place for me to come out of internal isolation. She wanted me to explore the places in my heart with her, not apart from her. I, like others, fear that if I let people really see me, they will turn away and leave.
Our friendship has now gone on for thirty years; and as I have opened myself more to her through the years, I have found that I live less behind shame and more out of freedom, allowing her and others to be with me. My friend listens, she sees me, and she hasn’t left. Her presence, her love and her pursuit of me have helped me to be more comfortable in my shame.
As I sit and talk with people I often run into their shame. I hear their stories, and ironically the place where they have encountered the most shame is within relationships. It is here where shame is learned, and it is also the place where shame finds healing.
To tell your story to another invites them to receive you and to dwell with you. While shame makes you think you are alone, relationships will remind you that you are not. We are made to live in community—the creation story tells us it is not good to be alone.
Back to my story, my friend saw me, she came after me and did not leave me alone to hide in the shadow of my shame. She helped me understand that the very shame that steals away my vulnerable self is able to be transformed and overcome by love and relationship, releasing the beautiful self that longs to display Christ to the world.
God gazes upon every part of my being and intends to always stay with me. He doesn’t turn away and leave, like I expect Him to at times—He just relentlessly keeps on coming for me, over and over again.
Written by Sonya Reeder, Director of Counseling, at Hope Road