shame

b-utter shame

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So, yesterday i wrote this (great?!) blog about love, shame, and intimacy. then, i went home and felt lonely. literally just moments after writing this blog i was faced with the reality of my own emotions. i was alone. and a little jealous of friends with boyfriends and husbands and babies. and in a society that values marriage and family above singleness in many ways, there can be shame associated with the single life. What’s wrong with me that i’m not married and cherished by a man and bearing children? Not only do I ask myself these questions, but my family and (even) well-meaning strangers ask these questions: Are you seeing anybody? Do you have any children? Why do these things have to define my life as a success or failure? Well, they don’t. But sometimes i get distracted from the awesomeness of God and i let my emotions, my loneliness and jealousy, take away my attention.
But it wasn’t until i was sitting there, eating butter out of the tub and watching netflix that i realized that i was facing the very challenge i just wrote about. (ok, don’t judge me too harshly on the butter….i’m on a low carb/no sugar food plan, so comfort foods just don’t exist in my world and i do love butter. it was all i could find in the house. diet coke and butter was my comfort of choice at the moment). so i’m sitting there, watching a woman birth a beautiful baby, and as the fifth tiny spoonful of butter melts on my tongue, i realize that i’m feeling lonely and jealous and i’m covering it with BUTTER! Talk about covering my shame.
So i asked myself: Self, what was that brilliant thing i wrote earlier? i wrote that intimacy is the answer and just stop and sit and ask the Lord to give you what you need in that moment. This is where the rubber meets the road. Do i really believe what i wrote? If so, then i need to try it. live it. i put the butter away. and….
i pulled out my painting supplies. very urgently, i think in an effort to quickly redeem myself. Then i play the exciting new album i just bought: Kim Walker-Smith singing The King is Here (collaborated with by the awesome Christa Black). and i begin to paint.
white canvas. it annoys me. i want to canvas to feel what i feel. so i start with black. and with every brush stroke i declare, out loud, who God is to me. you are the only one that satisfies me. you are the Lord of my life. you are the most beautiful person i know. and i keep painting until the whole canvas is black. then i let the Lord guide me with every color and brush stroke after that. purple, he says. purple? blah. no wait, dark purple. i splotch out this cornucopia shape slowly into the black. cornucopia*? what is that, anyway? that thing that holds fruit at thanksgiving, i think. Then blue/purple, same shape, just twisted a bit. then a blue one, then a green one, then yellow, each getting smaller. so now i have these cornucopia swirls. now, i had an image, a silhouette of Jesus with a crown of thorns in my mind, but i didn’t know if i had the skill to put it on the canvas. So i asked the Lord, what next? flip the canvas, he said. ok, that’s easy enough. now, we are going to paint that image, but upside down. upside down?! i probably can’t do it right side up! Do you trust me? he ask. Let’s do it together. upside down. sigh. sigh. sigh. ok.
So i get my little angled brush and away with the white we go. I painted carefully, trying to listen to His guidance and NOT my left brain (that critical, no, that isn’t right, side of the brain). i took it slow. i trusted. he guided. we painted. the king is here. the king is here.
And, voila! I turned it around and i could see the King!!!! And in that moment, i felt so completely loved and adored. all the crap i was feeling earlier was GONE. i knew he loved me. i knew he was with me. and i knew i wanted more time with him. So i turned out the lights and sat in his presence, listening to music, and lost track of time.
I share this, because sometimes we can hear / read good teaching but what does it look like to apply it? Well, for me, this is what it looked like to push past the shame, and stop wallowing, and let the Lord love on me. Find an activity you can do with the Lord that allows him to speak to you, or just sit, or whatever you can do to enter his presence. If nothing else, read Psalm 100:
Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.
Serve the Lord with gladness;
Come before Him with joyful singing.
Know that the Lord Himself is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving
And His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him, bless His name.
For the Lord is good;
His lovingkindness is everlasting
And His faithfulness to all generations

This Psalm tells us we enter His presence through praise. so, if you can do nothing else, then just sit and praise Him and who He is. come to think of it, that is how i started my painting! not declaring how i feel but what i know to be truth.

*cornucopia, by the way, i looked it up and it is the symbol of abundance and nourishment. Not that’s good stuff!!!!

Here is the final result : )

King

love shame intimacy

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love your neighbor as yourself. seems simple enough. but what if you don’t love yourself? what if you know all the flaws and shortcomings and sins about yourself that no one else does? What if your thoughts are selfish and wicked? What if you judge other people? We judge what they wear, and what they say, and how they spend their money, and how they show love. I judge.

love your neighbor as yourself. i think this principle is less something to strive towards and more a reflection of reality. I think WE DO love our neighbor as we love ourselves. the problem is the way we love ourselves. the problem is what we think about ourselves. we see weakness and sin and failure and then when we look at others, guess what we see?? weakness and sin and failure. we turn the hatred for ourselves outwards towards other people.

I have to learn to see Christ in me before i can see Christ in others.

If i may take this a step further….

Shame is the key to this issue, in my opinion. When Adam and Eve became aware of their sin for the first time ever, shame entered the world. Then, instead of continuing the relationship built on intimacy and vulnerability, they covered the parts of their bodies that represented the intimacy that had been broken. The covered their bodies from each other AND from God. Shame took their eyes off of each other and what they had been given and put it on themselves. They thought covering themselves was the answer. And we do the same thing today. We cover our shame with other stuff (anger? food? cutting? distance? lies? silence?) and separate ourselves from intimacy with God and with other people. Even though intimacy is the answer. Intimacy is the answer. Intimacy is the answer. did you get that yet? Intimacy creates life. Intimacy creates good fruit. Intimacy creates. So the enemy attacks intimacy and tricks us into separation, self hatred, and shame.

In the Old Testament, men lived in a visitation society. God came and met with them then he left again. We no longer live in a visitation society because Christ died for our sins and the Holy Spirit has come and lives inside of us. All the time. And because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we live in a season of GRACE. not judgement, but grace. we are covered by His blood and when God looks at us He sees the reflection of Himself that He placed in us in the womb and longs to call out our destiny and our beauty. He longs to draw near and give us experiences with Him.

Our prayer must arise: Father, what do you think of me?

When we know what the Father thinks of us, and how much he loves us, and is overjoyed by us, and is ravished in love with us, then we can finally RECEIVE his love, as he is the source of love, and then, finally, we can love others. And then, finally, we can uncover our shame and enter into intimacy with God and with our friends and family.

So the next time you want to cover your shame with a DQ blizzard or a tv marathon or a shopping spree, just stop and sit and ask the Lord to give you what you need in that moment. and once we learn to get our needs met from the source of all things good, then we can start to give others around us what they need too: love.