“The Glory of God is man fully alive.” -Saint Irenaeus
When was the last time you were fully alive or fully yourself? When was the last time you were wholehearted?
None of us can answer those questions with complete accuracy. But the better we know our stories, the better we can narrate when we began to lose heart. If you want to know the story of your heart, start with shame.
If you notice, shame is the first emotion mentioned in Scripture. “The two of them, the Man and his Wife, were naked, but they felt no shame.” (Genesis 2:25, MSG) Later on, Adam and Eve would hide in shame. But in the beginning, Genesis emphasizes humans existed without shame.
Without shame is the way it was supposed to be.
Without shame. Let that sink in for a moment. Can you imagine living for a moment without shame? Whether you know it or not, shame owns and drives you. Even if you’ve done some work on your shame, it ruthlessly waits on your heart’s doorstep. Not ten minutes goes by without shame inviting me to in some way earn my worth. Who I am in the moment is rarely enough.
What would it be like to wake up each morning without anything to hide?
What would it be like to look in the mirror and deeply admire the person you see there? Can you imagine humbly telling God he did a great job on you?
What would it be like to sit in a work meeting and recommend your colleague for the project you want because his skills better fit the job description?
What would it be to know you are enough? To know people can reject or accept you and neither will impact or change your identity or self-worth?
Such experiences sound foreign because toxic-shame haunted us the day we were born and has followed like a dark cloud ever since.
I still remember the night I first spotted shame in my daughter. She crawled around in her crib, staring at me through the wooden bars. I too crawled on all fours as I followed her around the crib. She raced to one corner and peaked out to see my eyes meet hers. Then she sped to the other side, and I snuck up to discover her waiting gaze. We giggled, laughed, connected, and almost touched Eden. At one point, she reached out for my face. Her finger poked my eye and then scratched me. I cried out. As I rubbed my eye, she crawled away and buried her face in the furthest corner. Ashamed she hid.
Oh how we know this story well, each of us in our own way. Our story started with shame, and it will befriend and haunt us until the end. What we do with our shame along the way has everything to do with the story we will live and the ways we will or will not reflect God. The more shame we carry, the less access we have to whom God made us to be.
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