Shame" says, "there's something innately wrong with me," "I have failed, I have let people down, I have not lived up to their expectations, they must see me as a failure, I am not enough."
What a serendipitous statement to read this afternoon as I've been pondering how to compose a blog post on the same subject. Because, you see, those exact feelings have been haunting me the past several months.
The odd thing is, I made my peace with God about my failure. God spoke to me almost immediately, using what I counted as loss as an example of His unconditional love for me. And that was something I realized, truly realized down in my gut, for the very first time.
But I've been unable to shake the feelings of shame because I believe that my failure let other people down. The expectations I (or they) set for myself? Completely shattered. And yes, perhaps too the fact that my untarnished Christian-girl image has a big smeary blotch right down the front has been hanging over my head.
Unending choruses of "what will they think? what will they say? what will they ask and will my answers be enough?"
you see, this post is not only about failure and shame. it's about demons. i've begun to think that they still exist. we create our own demons out of our idols (which we also create). recently, i picked up this book off the bargain rack at Borders. It's about Mary Magdalene, and the author fictionalized her early life based on the short phrase in Luke 8:2 describing the seven demons which Jesus cast out from her. In this book, Mary first opens herself up to the demons by her possession of a literal idol figurine. As time goes on, she is incapable of destroying the figure, even when it becomes clear that it is the source of her pain and grief.
is this not what we do? a failure or a shortcoming or a flaw becomes a fixation, which becomes an obsession, which takes our attention away from God, and thus it is an idol. and we let it torment us to within inches of our very sanity, at which point we are finally faced with the fact that Jesus Himself, God incarnate, is the only one able to drive those demons away.
how blessed am I that my church offered a healing service yesterday. a chance to be anointed with oil and prayed over by a pastor and group of lay prayer ministers. physical, emotional, and spiritual brokenness was challenged and claimed in the name of the Trinity.
not your typical Sunday morning--I know. but the Spirit of God was truly among us and I believe God was there with me in that moment ready to cast out my demons.
this is what I've realized since then--God is always willing. but I am the one who must let Him free me. how tightly we can hold on to that which hurts us! freedom can be uncomfortable at first, and scary, and different. but it's freedom.
God comes 99% of the way. He has all the power to defeat evil, and He has already triumphed over it once and for all. but I believe He requires of us a small "yes" in order to cast out our demons, smash our idols, and set us on our way in freedom. our fingers must uncurl from what we clutch so tightly so that we may be handed the gift of grace. it comes down to the familiar saying, "let go and let God".
if we are to be people of faith, if I am to be a woman of half the faith I claim, we must know what it means to let...
No comments:
Post a Comment