The Shame is Shattered

I have been meeting with Stephen now, on and off, since last January. Working with him has been challenging. He is a pastor - or once was - and now functions in pastoral ministry within the counseling office. His eyes light up as he talks about agape and our God.

Stephen prays. He prays a lot. I think he would say that he prays continuously. As I enter his office, I smell the scent of incense he has burned in his last moments before God. In some ways this has been intriguing and in other ways it has challenged my alienation from God in a most uncomfortable manner.

Slowly my relationship with God has returned. I first began praying again on a regular basis. I found it easier each time we met to talk about God moving in my life. But the best just happened. The shame is shattered.

I have envied Stephen's connection with God. It is so real and so accepting and so filled with an uncanny understanding of God's love. He breathes it in and out and, well, I have never seen anyone so enamored with the presence of God. There is no judgment in his having this and my not but rather a constant encouragement to see what I do have - it is there, don't you feel it, see it experience it? I have had that at times in life but never with this foundation that seems so unrockable. Instead, shame has always rocked my foundation.

Two weeks ago I began rereading The Shack. Having signed up for a discussion group at my church, I read and highlighted and turned down the corners of every important page. Passages leaped off the pages - things I had failed to see in the first read. But the overall issue wouldn't go away. Like Mack, I did not believe God was good, nor did I trust him. I judged Him guilty and I hated him for abandoning me. I could not reconcile my pain with God's mercy. I knew all the rationalizations of free will and God's creation but it didn't change my anger at God.

And, little by little God bored down into the pit of my soul.

After the abuse and over the years of dealing with it, I was smothered with a lie. The lie said "there is something terribly wrong with me." As I tried to embrace the truth that what happened to me was abuse and not my fault, I rattled the cage of that lie. I even disassembled it in my adult heart. Yet, deep deep down, underneath it all, formed before I had the power of language, I had first believed that lie; and still hidden,without words to speak it, the lie hissed its insidious poison.

Something was horribly wrong with me and I could not face that "truth" that was really not truth. I hated myself and that wrongness of my being but hating oneself cannot be held within for long, so I turned that hatred outward. Someone must be blamed, so I blamed God.

With pounding fists, the child lay across the mattress, screaming into her pillow. "I hate you God!" "I hate you God!" I remembered doing this throughout my childhood but I didn't remember why. I only knew I ended up there from time to time. For the past 9 years I have lived with that hatred in my conscious. Then this past weekend I realized my hatred of God was my defense from facing that false truth of something is terribly wrong with me. As I realized the truth that nothing IS wrong with me, the shame crumbled and I was flooded with the most wonderful sense of God's presence that I have ever known. It wasn't a knock me down kind of presence but one that carried only love. One without the shield of my own shame to block it. It felt kind of like a warm bath.

With the shattering of the shame has come my forgiveness of God and others that I could not find the ability to forgive. Shame always prevents us from forgiving, for someone must be to blame. We cannot handle shame so we project our anger onto others and mine was best projected onto God. Rather than hate myself, I hated Him.

The lie was exposed. The shame shattered. The hatred of God dissipated because it no longer served any purpose. What a sweet, sweet relationship I have drunk of these past few days.