I have long used Shame as a means of attempting to control my sinful behaviors.
This morning though, the Holy Spirit got hold of me. And showed me what I’ve really been doing. I’ve been denying the power of the atonement, and avoiding the realities the Holy Spirit was trying to show me.
Shame was my way of beating myself up. I thought if I shamed myself enough, I could get myself to stop. On some level I knew I had to let go, and let God. But the reality of what that meant had long since been lost on me. The Atonement was Christ’s forgiveness of our sins. I’ve been telling Jesus, “No, thank you very much; I really don’t need to be forgiven of this sin to get better. Forgiving me of this won’t improve things. But beating myself up with this bat called Shame, that will make me better. Yeah, you hanging on the Cross-, you taking all my sins, yeah, that’s great, but it can’t really make me quit doing this sinful behavior. It can’t take my sin away from me. Shame can.” And Shame did. For a while. The problem with Shame is it creeps back. It lays a foundation for the sin to come back again.
The Holy Spirit has long been trying to point out the true problems in my life. But like a bulimic, lost in the shame of their binging and purging, they see nothing except their shame over their behavior. All they know is the medicating power of the cycle of binge and purge. They know the temporary high of the behavior. The Shame is simply an alternative cycle. Okay, beat myself up over the fact that I’ve done this. Get the behavior to stop. And obviously shame was a good solution; it got the behavior to stop. Never mind about what the real reason was behind the behavior, a deep loneliness, and need to be accepted, first by self, and then by other. Or maybe the behavior came from childhood abuse. Or a long forgotten trauma, never dealt with. The Shame masks what is really there. With Shame you never have to face the true reasons for the behavior. I have used shame to avoid facing very painful things in my past.
Shame has been my bat of choice, what I use to beat myself up with. I’m sure it will be years before I truly put it down, and give my Shame back to my Savoir. But today I realized I have been shaming myself in an effort to control myself. That will stop. I may not be successful in stopping it today, but from now on, I recognize the behavior. And now I know my Heavenly Father is at my side, helping me, forgiving me for each time I pick up that bat to beat myself up. He’ll forgive me. Some day I’ll actually understand what that means. For today I simply say it.
