Expectation 2: Let's Be Rooted And Grounded In Love (Shame Be Gone!)
I want to show you who I am, so help me manage how I am feeling...
One of my obstacles is that I cannot be clear, except for in brief chunks.What did you have for tea? Fish. What did you do this week? Volunteered at Mind. What are your hobbies? I like to sing. You get the picture.
Ask a complex question. For example, what was your last job? And I will probably begin to waffle. Not because I desire to confuse... I find a linear story doesn't cut it when I adhere to the strict facts. To make my choices relevant to now and who I've become, I need to put a few thousand megahertz of emotion behind those words of mine.
Please don't sponsor my shame - treat me kindly
Also, because I've been rejected numerous times -- over and over again -- my shame receptors are sensitive. I frequently find myself in a “shame storm” as TED Talker Brene Brown, would describe it (she's a social worker who studies resilience). Shame is a feeling of wanting to hide, to close down, to cut off, to isolate, to protect, to conserve.
Shame can make us angry. Shame can make us resourceful.
Why do we cover up shame?
I hate to reveal shame to bystanders. What if they agree I have those unique deficits that learning, life experience, and repentance won't overcome? Those ugly birth disadvantages that make me 'me'. What if my neighbours pass by on the opposite side of the street, and I don't find my good Samaritan? What if no-one wants to see me in my woundedness?
We've all been around those sorts. The danger is real. The critics. The bullies. The distracted. Those who prefer a stiff upper lip, that does not tremble. Shame and I, we are frenemies, which is a hybrid word, bolting together 'friends' and 'enemies.' I know shame is bad for my health. I make a trade-off with it because it volunteers an immediate answer. And oh, how I search for those. Why? Why? Why?
This comes back to the clarity expectation. When I am not ashamed, I'm prepared to ask, instead of "Why?", "Who?" And if you are a Christian the "who" is always Jesus, God the Father, or The Holy Ghost.
How do I experience shame? Why is it terrible for me?
If you experience shame, you may feel it distinctly in YOUR body pattern. You may want to lash back. Or you may want to outperform because shame says you are no good. For me, shame is like taking an eraser to a pencil drawing. It rubs everything out. My achievements. My relationships. My connections. This is particularly painful because I enjoy being around people.
Shame is quick to arrive and slow to leave. I reach exhaustion. Shame leads to insomnia and migraines. I can't divert a shame storm without help. My shame experience is spacey, dangerous. I'm afraid it will cause a car crash; a fatal error while I'm on my bike. Shame is like the snow, in that (I could tell you stories) it abhors convenience and interrupts my routine. I don't recognise connections, memories, or dreams.
I float round detachedly, like a butterfly, not presuming upon the world to be a person with thoughts or emotions at all. I don't deserve the 'feelers,' imagine they shunned me like rude, ingracious party guests. Without emotions I am simply animal. Shame is the invisibility cloak I give to my human vulnerability. And it hurts.
I've given shame a bad press. Like sugar that is sweet and highly addictive, it has a lighter side. Shame can motivate us; can help us win. How? We run towards pride and away from fear. Shame can pressure us to find solutions to problems because of how fast we want to flee from grief and loss. If shame gives us the best solutions, that's another matter!
But ultimately, shame will destroy our relationships. We can't experience the zenith of intimacy when shame distracts us. Like the snow, shame covers, and encourages us to present a defended, false self, that we need to melt away to restore ourselves so we can give and receive love. You need salt and light to dispel a shame storm. Vulnerability requires interpersonal risk and shame reminds us that can cause pain. When our relationships don't cost us we value them less and less. Soon we are in a shame storm cycle.
What's the cure, please? Intimacy will heal me...
I have found the cure for shame is to get around people who include me. Who make me feel as if I belong. These are people who are prepared to risk their own comfort to invite me to join the gang. They are Christians who use the five love languages that Gary Chapman developed to aid human exchanges of affection. They are: Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Quality Time, Gifts, and Words of Affirmation. The love languages give us a new vocabulary to connect and heal.
When I feel close, then I feel grounded and rooted in love. I am resilient. I am sensitive. I am grateful. That doesn't mean moments of shame won't come. Comparison is a rapid route to shame, and to resist that is incredibly difficult when you enter into mutually beneficial relationships, in which you desire to be seperate, and free.
But we can talk about that. I want to go to a church that deploys Christians to hand out umbrellas and build tabernacles when those pesky shame-storms gather. Where Christians look upwards toward the glory of God to find a mirror that will show them who they really are. And I want to meet friends.
I want to know the depth of Jesus' sacrifice for me, and get to know what my peers and leaders have been redeemed from in their lives. Then I might be healed. A good church should proclaim, we have overcome this sin, and we will help you to.
When I confess my shame, for a moment I will become vulnerable, and then a lover will gently run salt water into the wound. I want to find a church where healing is being rooted and grounded in love.