From Toxic Shame to Freedom

Italy...Ebenezer of peace and freedom  2008

I grew up in the church.  I always hungered for God.  Or maybe I should say, He has always pursued my heart.  In the early years, I thought it was because I knew I was bad.  I knew I needed God to forgive me and help me.  My behavior was inconsistent with who I wanted to be.  Try as I might, I just couldn’t be “good enough.”   Maya Angelou has a saying that I have heard Oprah repeat often, “When you know better, you do better.”  Well…I have not found that to always be true in my life.  I know better than to eat the whole carton of ice cream, but I still do sometimes.  I know better than to lash out vicious words in anger at a friend, but I have done it.  There are some habits that are hard to break.  There are some sins that are hard to walk away from.  There are some addictions that are gripping for those of us who are addiction-prone.  The apostle Paul said it well:

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Romans 7:15

“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”  Romans 7:21-25

In the early years, I did not know the difference between healthy conviction that leads to repentance and reconciliation with God and toxic shame that leads nowhere but to a downward spiral.  I guess it was part of my nature to grasp onto the verses in the Bible about humility but to ignore the ones about loving your neighbor as yourself, for surely if we are to love as we love ourselves, then it is a “given” that we love ourselves.    I don’t remember hearing a sermon about that.  Loving myself never crossed my mind.  It wasn’t in my radar.  I wanted to crucify myself.  I wanted to die.

The first time someone told me that I was allowed, even supposed, to love myself I was fifteen years old.  I had been struggling with feelings of jealousy and what seemed like hatred towards my best friend.  She was a lot of things that I thought I wanted to be.  I confessed these feelings, in shame, to a Youth Pastor from Rockford Illinois who happened to be ministering at my church Youth Retreat in New Castle, Pennsylvania.  I was so sad, so depressed, and feeling shame because I was envious of my friend to the point that I believed I hated her.

I still remember the moment that he told me the truth.  He said to me, “Janice, you don’t hate your friend.  You hate yourself.” 

No one had ever told me that before.  Just months before, I had been so depressed that my parents had put me on a waiting list at a psychiatric hospital in a nearby town (unbeknownst to me) and one day, they drove me there with the intent to admit me.   The psychiatrist on duty examined me and refused to admit me.  He told my parents, “She is not mentally ill.  She is just depressed.”

I had been treated as an outpatient for a few months before I met this Youth Pastor.  I visited a traditional child-Psychiatrist who nodded his head and said very little.  In all that time, he had never told me what this Pastor was able to point out in just one conversation.

My prescription from the Pastor was to completely immerse myself in God’s love.  I was to focus every day on how much God loved me.  That was a turning point in my life, for sure.  I wish I could say that I learned to love myself at that juncture, but I did not.

Youth Pastor Greg Speck and Janice 1981

Learning to receive God’s love and to love myself has been a life-long process.  For me, it has involved years of Bible study, Christian counseling, prayers for deliverance and inner healing, and a support group that meets at my local YMCA called HOPE.  HOPE has provided practical tools and support to deal with emotional eating and codependency by learning to choose healthy boundaries and self-care.  God has used all of this in my life to transform me.  I am a different person than I used to be.  It has been hard-fought.  It has taken years.  Any progress I have made has been worth every step.  I am freer now than I have ever been.  I am more in love with God than I have ever been.  I care for myself without guilt or shame.  Okay, rarely with guilt or shame.  The founder of the HOPE group, Julie Hall, says it well, “I don’t do shame anymore.” 

The Youth Pastor who gave me such wisdom all those years ago is still ministering to Youth today.  He told me back then…”Anything of worth or of value takes time and effort and is never easy.”  Yes, I have found this to be true. 

We are body, soul, and spirit.  All are made by God and all are important.  The body we have is just for this lifetime, but caring for it can make this lifetime more pleasant and rich.  Our minds can be cluttered with junk or full of wisdom and truth…depending on what we choose for our thought-life.  Our souls are heaven-bound or not, whether we choose to lay our lives at Jesus’ feet…at the foot of the cross or choose to live only for ourselves.  We have a choice. 

I am sad for those who focus only on the body, or only on the mind, or only on the spirit…oh, I know that “balance” is that elusive goal.  We never get it just right.  Seems among some Christians, though,  there is praise for being “super-spiritual” but little focus on physical or emotional health, especially emotional health.  I found that when I was “sick” emotionally, I wasn’t really able to be healthy spiritually or physically, either.  Depression and self-hatred is like walking in a fog.  I am SO grateful for that Youth Pastor who helped start me on my journey to receive God’s love and to love myself.  It has made all the difference.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36