How does shame haunt you? What
would it look like to let God's love be your shield against the voice of shame?
How might your life change? How might you change?
I sat in the front row teetering
my pencil between my fingers as I listened to my fifth grade teacher lecture.
She stood in front of the white board, nearly directly in front of me, moving
her hands as she spoke and her shoulder length dark hair following. I listened
and the pencil danced to its own rhythm between my index and middle fingers until
somewhere between the to and fro, it projected forward. Straight at my teacher.
Shocked by what just happened I
sunk in to my desk. My teacher, shocked as well, asked for whom ever threw the
pencil to come pick it up. I did not throw
it, I thought. There was no intentionality. No fore thought. No aim could have
made it maneuver the way it did. It just happened. Some mandatory part of
physics with the object in motion and the moving. It happened so fast.
I could not move. For the life of
me I could not look at her or get my body to move out of my seat. I was glued. My
face red and hot. My heart pounding in my chest. All eleven years of brain
activity shutting down.
And she waited.
She waited for the perpetrator to
gather the weapon, announcing she would sit at her desk until it was picked up.
After what seemed like an
eternity, my feet moved, though my body still felt paralyzed and I could not
think clearly, I managed to pick it up and return to my desk.
I was humiliated. The class knew
it was me. She knew it was me. I felt awful. Full of shame and regret and vowed
never to tweedle my pencil or any other object again in class after this freak
accident, playing it over in my head.
Shame has its way of replaying worst
parts, whether as bad as we felt or otherwise, over and over. Shame makes us
the culprit and the one who messed up, making everything our fault; even
circumstances out of our control or unplanned.
Since listening to God and
following his leading, shame is a little easier to spot and usually sounds
silly once it is said aloud. Things that are playing around in our heads tend
to sound not so daunting when they are spoken and can been seen as they truly
are - lies and life taking. Shame cannot hide in the face of God's love and or
stand in the face of his truth, which is why knowing truth is so important, as
well as believing it.
Living a life believing truth is
freeing and allows for growth and new perspective. And it is a constant
reminder. Not something that comes naturally, for me anyway. It is a continual
process of seeing the bigger picture and not letting silly things like pencils
flying bring me down and allowing God to
speak and move and beginning to grasp
his love through it all.
Here's to less shame and God's
love prevailing.
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This is part of a 365 day blogging series through Savor by Shauna Niequist. If you would like to blog along, whether daily or weekly, I would love to have you for the journey; be sure to link back to the post. And if you are not a blogger, you can join along, too. Just leave your response and answers in the comments.