Shame

Wants to grab a hold of you and choke every bit of life and worth out of you. One bad decision, one mistake, one mess up, one slip up, that’s all it takes to become ridden with shame and guilt. Maybe it is a constant series of wrong choices and mess ups that has you there. Maybe it’s an old habit that slipped up. Maybe it’s a onetime mistake that you can’t get rid of. Whatever it is, shame is lingering there leaving you feeling defeated and worthless. You want to run and hide from the crowd. You don’t want to go back to the place where you messed up because you remember the faces of those around you that watched you mess up. You don’t want God to help you because it feels better to hide from Him instead. You don’t really know how to ask God for help because you’ve already asked one hundred times before, yet here you are again.

The first humans to ever be created felt the same guilt and shame. Yet, through God’s mercy and love towards them (us) he still chose to use them. It would have been so easy for God to destroy them, and start over. But he didn’t.  

Can I be completely honest? Some days I feel like I completely SUCK at parenting. I overreact, get flustered, and let my emotions show too much. I don’t know about you, but Satan absolutely loves to mess with my mind. This day in particular, I overreacted with one of my precious kids and Satan went all kinds of crazy on me. It wasn’t immediate though. Just as soon as I was about to drift off to sleep that night, shame came over me and in that moment my mind went to so many extremes. I immediately begin to make a plan on how I was going to withdraw to myself and not face the people I overreacted in front of. I had every good excuse going. I woke up the next morning and tried to pray it out, but couldn’t. There was a cloud over me that I couldn’t break through.  

Plan B... Change my prayer from being about me and my sorry self (how I felt at the time) to facing the enemy head on instead of cowering down to him. After all, life isn’t all about me. For the rest of the afternoon I begin to breakthrough that cloud. As soon as that “shame” and embarrassed feeling would creep in, I literally had to shake off those feelings. Chris and I had a “discussion” the other morning (before the above situation) and he lovingly told me, “You have to stop allowing your feelings dictate how you live your life. Just because you don’t like how something is going, doesn’t mean you allow that feeling to control you. You choose to be happy or be miserable, and you need to start making better choices.” Now, while that may sound harsh. I’m glad he loves me enough to speak truth and life to me even when it’s hard. I started to get defensive, which is normally how I would react but this time I didn’t… because he was exactly right.

The shame and guilt you feel shouldn’t control how you live. Feeling guilty, ashamed, or sorry isn’t always a bad thing.  The Holy Spirit loves us enough to make us aware that we need to make better choices in our life. However, what we do with those emotions is up to us. We either hold on to the shame and guilt, which is what Satan wants, or we turn them over the Jesus. He took our guilt and shame so we wouldn’t have to live with it and in it.

As Easter approaches, all I can think about is that Jesus did not suffer and die a painful death for us to live in shame. He took ALL of that to the grave with him. What if Jesus only lived by his feelings? He himself spent time praying in the garden of Gethsemane because he was so overwhelmed with anguish over what he was fixing to do. Even Jesus tried to skirt around facing death, but he knew his purpose on this earth wasn’t only about him. It was about you and I. 

  

To you… struggling mom, feeling like a failure dad, trying to be a good parent, mistake making, and bad decision making individual Jesus suffered so you wouldn’t have to. He was raised to life, so you can have life.

He who the Son sets free, will be free indeed. John 8:36

{Indeed: certainly, undeniably, definitely}