My sister was livid at the thought of my excreting in my britches right there on the city street. She screamed at me to hurry so we could make it home in time. But... I sat down on the side of the road and relieved myself.
She beat me back to the house by about 30 seconds, and by the time I walked in the door, everyone who was in the house knew of the shameful thing that had just occurred in my short little life, and hers.
Another time, around that same age, someone caught me digging in my nose and eating a booger. For I don’t know how long, people started addressing me as The Booger Girl.
Shame and humiliation can be the backbone for many kinds of emotional pain that are side effects and consequences of shame. There was no such thing as social media when I was eight years old, but what if it was, and they had put my humiliating experiences on blast? I would not have been able to live it down, or know how to get over it.
Even now, I can remember the negative emotions that washed over me when someone would look me in the face and say, “Booger Girl!” I regretted that they had caught me eating boogers.
I heard a preacher say that someone asked him, “If every thought that you ever had would be exposed on a screen right now, would you still have your job as pastor?” He responded, “Oh God no! Would you still have any friends?” If others could sometimes hear what we were thinking about them, they would leave us to our thoughts permanently.
My husband’s daughter and her three children have had to move in with us and I have hated nearly every minute of it. My lifestyle and their lifestyle differs on so many levels, and the ugly thoughts that invades my mind is quite embarrassing and I am truly glad that they are not exposed on a screen or heard aloud. It would be more shameful than excreting in my britches on the city street.
As Christians, we are encouraged to love others as we love ourselves. Jesus said, “Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with them two miles.” I am ashamed to say that these are no where near the thoughts I have been having about this situation. And it is no where near how I have even prayed about it.
I have tried to pretend on the outside that I am okay with this, while wearing my inner mask to cover the shame of my real thoughts. I even considered leaving my husband to escape this situation, but I love my husband. So, I am stuck... pretending on the outside and feeling shame and dissatisfied on the inside, hoping that my Heavenly Father is not too grieved at my hypocrisy.
A story is told in Mark chapter 1 of a leper that came to Jesus with his shame. The leper said, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” Jesus said, “I am willing.” He healed the man’s shame immediately. The leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
The apostle John said, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:8-9)
The writer of Hebrews says in chapter 12, that for the joy set before Him, Christ endured the cross despising the shame. Now, having disarmed principalities and powers, He has made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them at the cross. He is now on the opposite end of shame, sitting honorably at the right hand of the throne of God.
We are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus and our need for feeling humiliated has been squashed at the cross. I am daughter of the King, and He has declared that in that day I shall not be shamed for any of my deeds in which I transgress against Him (Zephaniah 3:11). The Lord has spoken, let it be as He has said. Amen.