I love personality tests. I love seeing how my brain and the brains of others work. Almost 2 years ago, my husband and I heard about Enneagram. We took the test immediately and then while on our family vacation that year, we made all of our kids take it. It has been so helpful in all of our relationships! Understanding how each one works, which reactions help, which reactions harm. For me, it made me feel seen.
That’s what we all want, right? To be seen? We want the world around us to understand us and see us. We want to be known. We want our loved ones and those we interact with to really know us, to get us. But do we really want to be seen?
Being seen makes us vulnerable. If someone really sees us, then we can no longer hide behind our facade of what we want people to think. If I’m seen, then I’m exposed. We certainly don’t like to be exposed.
If anyone lived in this tension of wanting to be seen and wanting to hide, it was the Samaritan Woman Jesus met at the well. As Jesus encounters her, she is hiding in plain sight. She is at the well in the middle of the day. This was the way for her to avoid being seen by the other women in the village to be mocked or more than likely, ignored. There’s nothing worse than being in the presence of a crowd and being ignored. But, Jesus shows up during her mundane chore of drawing water and her life changes forever.
However, Jesus doesn’t show up with the preacher’s voice of “REPENT, THUS SAITH THE LORD!” No, Jesus shows up to have a conversation. They talk water, they talk belief systems, then as Jesus reveals who he is to her, he tells her everything she had ever done. Jesus didn’t make a spectacle, it was just her and him. In my mind, she must have collapsed to her knees with relief and shame. Relieved that finally, someone sees her. Finally, she isn’t ignored or shunned. In the same breath, shame would shroud her. What had she done? And now this man was exposing it all. He wasn’t exposing to condemn, he was exposing to accept.
Today, do you feel seen? The Enneagram is a great way to feel understood, but only El Roi, “- The God who sees me”, can really make you be seen. 13 She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen[a] the One who sees me.” – Genesis 16:13
“Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” Genesis 2:25 NIV
Embarrassed.
Steam seemed to be rising off my neck, as my face turned red. Sweat began to form on my temples. I could feel the drip of salty liquid slowly slide down my cheek. The words that would dribble out of my mouth were almost choked out as my throat felt like it was closing. The thought I chased was “is it okay to lie in church?”
The lie I told that day was prompted not as a question of my own behavior but on the behaviors of someone else. In fact, that someone else happened to be the person I was married to.
This feeling I was caught in was shame. The action was a cover for the life of lies I was allowing to be lived in my home. As if I had become a five year old child backed into a corner staring down the face of choosing to expose the mess of inside my life or to continue to lie, I lied.
The truth, in my mind, was an indictment on me as a minister. Yes, as a minister I lied. The lie was told in order to keep the carefully placed facade situated so no one saw the truth. To expose the truth would come at a cost I was unwilling to pay. The cost of in my mind was my position in ministry, the influence I had, and what I believed at the time would even be my calling. The simple sin of sustaining a false story seems a small price to pay to keep what I valued. Shame shaped my identity. Shame became my master.
Shame is a cover. Much like Adam and Eve knit together leaves to hide their naked, vulnerable state from the Lord, shame shell shocks us into covering ourselves and those around us. Some cover is a protection mechanism for our own sins. Other covers are not simply for self protection, but who we are covering for. Shame has a powerful way of backing us into corners to create covers for others.
Eden was perfect. In the longing thought of ample, beautiful scenery of greens, reds, blues, and colors our eye has never even imagined the perfection of man and woman. Something we cannot even begin to fathom. Their perfection was wrapped in one word: naked. In full disclosure, they were naked and felt no shame.
Shame entered the earth on the slithery back of the serpent with a simple question: “did God really say?” For Adam and his wife, they owned their own shame of coming short of God’s intended obedience of their lives. But what if you truly never took the bite? What if you cover your nakedness not out of your sins, but the sins of someone else?
Shame has a power to back us into places to do just that. Poorly crafted lies told to us, we spread like a blanket of protection for our own identity even when the sins are not ours to own. Shame has a whispering voice that narrates life telling you that their sin is your shame.
So how do you crawl out from under the covers of someone else’s shame?
1) Tell the truth, the whole truth, so help you God.
And the truth will set you free. Please read this with caution. This is not me condoning you to put someone else on blast all over your socials. This is me saying “stop lying”.
As I sat my kids down to explain why I was divorcing their mom, I continued to lie. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t. It was not that passion had faded in the relationship or we just could not get along, as I tried to soften the blow to my three kids. The truth was there was infidelity in the marriage and a lot of it. In that moment, choosing to lie kept the cover and kept the cycle of shame. Note, telling the truth to anyone does not have to include every juicy detail, but it does require you to quit covering for someone else’s sin.
The truth is a powerful weapon in overcoming shame. The truth causes you to take ownership of what is yours, but also forces you to not take on what is not true of your life. This type of shame is like a backpack full of bricks that someone else has had permission to keep stacking in there. Shame tells you your responsible to keep carrying them, even when those heavy sins are not your own.
Outlined in the book of Joshua is moment where the children of Israel finally receive their promise. After 40 years of wandering, they reach where God was taking them. At a place called Gilgal, the Bible tells us the Lord rolled the shame of Egypt away.
For 40 years, Israel walked with the label of an Egyptian slave. When in truth, they were free all along.
2) Leave it where it lies
Telling the truth once will not be enough. Like the slithering liar that slid into the story of the garden, the temptation to lie will come back. Those same embarrassed emotions will tempt you to tell the old well rehearsed story. You will be tempted to cover for them as protection for yourself and for them. You will lie to cover embarrassment. You lie in order to protect someone else’s image. You lie to protect your own.
Who you need tell the truth to is not the whole world, but yourself. Shame will reintroduce a familiar story with familiar characters. It will attempt to hold you hostage in the lies you have been telling and repeated to yourself.
Once you break the cycle of lies, covers, stretched truths, you leave them where they lie. Drop the heavy bag of bricks. Leave it where it lies. Once you shed the shame don’t pick it back up. It was never yours to carry in the first place.
3) Get comfortable being naked.
In the classic 90’s sitcom Friends, the six New York City friends have an unsuspecting and unusual neighbor, “ugly naked guy”. While ugly naked guy never makes an on-screen appearance, one thing is for certain, he is comfortable in his birthday suit.
Shame becomes an identity cloak, something we cover our vulnerabilities with. While I am not advocating sitting in the buff with the blinds open, there is a level of being comfortable in your own skin that comes with shedding shame. When you shed the shame, you become vulnerable, which means allowing people to see you, all of you. Shame has been a hiding mechanism. Truth is big reveal of who you are. It is a risk of letting people see the authentic version of yourself that has been hiding.
Adam and Eve walked in the garden “naked and unashamed”, fully seen by each other and God. While we can cover our shame from others, it is impossible to hide from God. To truly walk out from the cover of someone else’s shame, you have to get comfortable being seen, completely seen. You have to get comfortable being emotionally naked.
This is a challenge. It is one we find most difficult. It is easier to blame and keep the shame then be seen. As a good friend has often reminded me, when people see the real you, they tend to like you more. When you face shame, hiding has become a habit. It will take time creating a new habit of allowing people to see you as you are, hurts, scars, wounds, warts and all. The fascinating thing is when we expect people to see the worst, they often see the best of us. They like us more.
Don’t play the blame game
Shedding shame is never about being right, it is about being free. It is not about winning friends to your side. It is not about pursuing sympathy or empathy. It is plain and simple about leaving a weight behind that has felt like toting a dead body on your back everywhere you have gone. Shedding shame is about freedom from what has bound you and your identity. Shedding shame is about living in the liberty of the truth. Shedding shame is leaving what is dead right where it lays and walking forward.
Live in the truth. Live in the present. Leave behind the shame someone else dressed you in.
“Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the place has been called Gilgal to this day.” Joshua 5:9 NIV
Shedding Someone Else’s Shame
As I stood with a family friend in a local retail store, she began to unpack her story. It was a story of hurt, deceit, unfaithfulness, heartbreak and the years spent hiding the crushing those actions performed. For several decades, this wife and mother, had stayed imprisoned by her situation because of one simple word — SHAME.
At times in life we make words prisoners of our mind, because to say them would be to voice the very thing we do not want to admit. So locked away, inside hearts are expressions we refuse to say because the reverberation off our vocal cords would make the reality to real. Making it real means having to face the giant that it is.
Honest, unspoken words like – abused, divorced, unfaithful, abandoned. Brene Brown, author and shame researcher says “shame derives its power from being unspeakable.”
Shame works a lot like these words steeped in silence and hidden in hearts. Locked up as a prisoner of emotion chained to the walls of our brain where it lies haunting the thoughts and dreams of life. Shame is a prisoner holding us at its inmate.
In the narrative found above, Joshua and the children of Israel had finally found themselves in the promise. Rivers had been crossed, land had begun to be taken. The promise passed down from Abraham was beginning to be realized. Just one problem. After 40 years of wandering in freedom from their affliction, Israel still carried the stigma of a slave. For 40 years of between prison and promises, the label never spoken but never fully let go of was wrapped in the single word: slave.
Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. Joshua 5:9
Reproach is not commonly tossed around in our modern day American vernacular. Another translation of this same Hebrew word found in Joshua is “shame”. Shame we understand. Shame we can put flesh on. Shame we face daily in the mirror, in the workplace, in our lives. Shame is like an emotional shackle that tells us we are not enough of.
Not good enough. Not skinny enough. Not a present enough parent. Do not provide or make enough. Not enough of this or that. And never really will be.
Shame shouts the lack of enoughs into the canyon of souls allowing the echo off the walls to reverberate back over and over again.
Sitting on the precipice of promise still shackled to shame is where Israel finds themselves in the passage in Joshua. The odd thing is many, if not most of those who had crossed the Jordan River were not the same who had passed through the Red Sea. An entire generation was left deceased in the desert and another generation had been born. Yet, the implication of the text is that the shame of slavery was still their burden to bear even those who had never baked bricks for Pharaoh.
An entire generation was still shackled to the shame of their parents past.
This is the situation for a portion of the children of Israel. Sons and daughters who have never been slaves are unable to walk free. We can infer this from the text because Israel as a people have not been in Egypt for 40 years, but it is hard to remove 400 years of family history. A generation in the desert picked up the past shame and carried it into the promiseland.
Who’s shame have you picked up?
It is a student with a drunk parent, who is ashamed. It is a spouse with who’s partner has been unfaithful, that hides the hurt from shame. It is the parent with an addict for a son, who makes excuses for them because shame tells them they were the bad parent.
Shame is something we pick up, especially within the confines of relationships.
Our first scriptural instance of shame is in the Garden, where Adam and his wife had been naked and unashamed. After the Fall, they were hiding and had fashioned the first set of clothes mankind knew. God’s exact question to them was “who told you you were naked?”
Adam and Eve were unafraid of being seen, suddenly being seen was their greatest fear. So they did what all of us do when we feel shame, they hid. How do we quit hiding due to the shame of someone else?
How do you shed someone else’s shame?
Renew your heart
Shedding someone else’s shame takes a heart change to be willing to be seen, fully seen. It takes a spiritual cardiac surgery that faces the fear of rejection, criticism, and hurt to first come before God with “here I am, as I am” approach.
The Hebrew men would have to be circumcised at Gilgal in order to renew the Abrahamic Covenant. This symbolic physical act cut the ties to Egyptian ownership and once again made Yahweh their God. Paul challenges New Testament believers to have their heart circumcised. Our covenant connection with God is not one of physical act but an act of our spirit in accord with the Spirit (Romans 2:28-29).
In the same way physical circumcision requires being fully seen and exposed, circumcision of the heart requires the same level of vulnerability. It requires we be seen.
The heart surgery by the Spirit of God requires us to give him all of it – the good, the bad, the hidden hurts, the shames of our sins and those of who have sinned against us. In order to renew your heart God has to be given all of it.
Shedding someone else’s shame requires a new heart, a heart that releases yourself from the responsibility of someone else’s actions. More importantly a heart that releases someone else from “owing” you for what they have done. Please understand, hurt happens and is real. Yet, healing in your heart takes place with a renewed heart that releases you from feeling owed by the hurts they caused.
Note: this does not release someone from the natural consequences of their actions or from taking responsibility for them. It is simply a release of the debt you feel you are entitled to because of their actions. If you always feel owed by them, you will remain imprisoned to that emotion.
Change your mind
A good friend and my counselor finally convinced me that my emotions did not lie in heart as much as they were founded in my mind. It is the power of our thoughts that create the feelings we feel. Despite Israel’s 40 years of desert living, they stayed imprisoned by their past in Egypt. An entire nation set free still thought of themselves as slaves.
What we think, what we call ourselves, our internal self-talk founded in our thoughts creates the identity we see of ourselves. God can call you son or daughter, but if you still see yourself as a slave, you will never truly be free.
Throughout the New Testament the writers pen passages not simply about heart change, but a change of your mind.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2 NIV
“Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest.” Hebrews 3:1 NIV
“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:” Philippians 2:5 NIV
How you think determines how you feel. Shame will whisper lies, you have to call them what they are: lies. Jesus said the truth sets us free. Truth changes our thinking from being imprisoned by shame to leaving it behind to live in the truth of Christ.
While Hip Hop group Geto Boys said “My Mind is Playing Tricks on Me”, the Apostle Paul said it this way “set your mind on things above” and “think on these things” whatever is noble, true, trustworthy, admirable.
Having a changed mind does not change the hurt, but it allows you no longer to be shackled to shame because the ability to see and speak truth changes the way you think.
If you want to be free from shame do this one thing: live in truth.
