enough......

I have always struggled with shame, I think I am just starting to recognize how much it STILL impacts my value and worth economics and actually weighs me down contextually. I am realizing how much work I STILL need to do…but I suppose therein I can be so grateful…I know where to step in, where to step FORWARD.

I was born into a family where I learned to perform for approval. I can remember as a little girl hearing my mom make statements resembling, “you know how to play the game - you’re smart.” The underlying truth: I was manipulative and did chores before asking for privileges because I knew how to get what I wanted. The darker and scarier reality: it taught me love was earned - a reward based value system rooted deep within me. I can see the wounds and scars so vividly now, I had no comprehension for them then. I am convinced that love is temporary and fleeting, that it can be taken off the table at a moments notice, that it will disappear if you don’t DO ENOUGH. I have experienced this on a multitude of occasions and live in the weight of disappointment, sorrow, and SHAME from those losses. I also live in FEAR of it happening again. On repeat. With virtually everyone I care about. 

I just returned from Rwanda - a country that makes my heart beat faster and encapsulates more joy than I can possibly explain - a place where I meet with God in an intimate way - a place that has forever marked me, changed me, created within me a desire for justice and true change. Because of my time in Rwanda, God has re-shaped the very context of my everyday and pressed me to reconsider virtually everything. I went for the first time in 2017 - it was illuminating. In 2018 I couldn’t wait to return; but this trip was SO different - it was as magical and vibrant and radiant and full of God’s hand and presence as ever, but harder and darker and weightier. It has taken over a month to sift through the feelings that sit on top of my experience in Rwanda. The feelings surrounding my team. The words that were said. The shame that I carry for not DOING ENOUGH, BEING ENOUGH, for FAILING… and therefore no longer being loved, no longer being lovable. 

So for the past several weeks I have been re-writing the narrative, trying to cue a new response that doesn’t allow shame to drown out the voice of the Father who sings love over His children and is not burying me in disappointment or fear of loss, but is welcoming me to celebrate each moment. He is inviting me to embrace each second spent with a camper, each tear shed over the desperation of poverty that permeates throughout the continent of Africa, each smile that overtook me because the joy was deep and profound, each prayer written in my journal as I cried out to Him for wisdom, each walk through the streets of this beautiful country that He planted deep within me, each moment of worship that brought me back to surrender and the enormity of His sacrifice, to savor the sound of their laughter and to allow their faces to run through my mind like a slideshow. He is asking me to realize that I am not perfect but to lay that at His feet and know that He loves me, and those who see me love me as well - and to recognize that real love can’t be picked up and thrown away. 

Casting off shame means embracing FREEDOM. Not a freedom to do what I want but a freedom FROM what I have carried. This is where I have to grow. THIS is how I have to walk forward. I have to let go of the weight of embracing the opinions and perspectives of others and allowing that to cripple me or weigh me down. I have to look ONLY to the voice of my Father and know that He has DONE ENOUGH to set me free. Oh Lord that I would be able to choose you and abandon the rest. Give me strength, and steadfast courage to walk forward - one obedient step at a time.