Healing from shame: Possible and desirable?

Introduction

I began exploring the issue of shame a number of years ago. I have always lived in the suburbs of London in the UK, and for 15 years have engaged in mission to spiritual seekers at New Age-type fairs. Despite a willingness to enter into a conversation about Christianity, during my interactions in these environments, I began to observe that some people consider themselves unworthy to receive prayer. I then met a young woman who, despite appearances to the contrary, believed herself to be ugly and was unable to look at herself in the mirror. I was deeply moved and shocked by this experience, yet was challenged by people who know me well to recognise a similarly distorted image of myself. Through being asked to preach on Jesus healing the woman with haemorrhaging in Luke 8:40–56, and referring to a chapter in Janet Davis’s (2012: 167) book My Own Worst Enemy, I came to acknowledge this as caused by shame. Since that time, I have sought to understand shame, wrestle with it in my own life and create a missional community, called Sacred Space Kingston, which practises shame resilience. It is my contention that healing from a harmful or damaging sense of shame happens through relationship – both reconciliation to God in Christ and a renewed sense of connection with other human beings in our spheres of influence.

Definition

The American shame researcher Brene Brown (2012: 69) defines shame as ‘the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging’. Alan Mann (2005: 5), in his book Atonement for a ‘Sinless’ Society, describes shame as ‘our failure to live an ideal that we have held for ourselves’. And in Shame: The Human Nemesis by David F Allen (2010: 26), shame is conveniently defined as ‘Self-Hatred Aimed at ME’. However, I am conscious that these definitions are all from my western postmodern, post-secular context. They reflect a very individualised and internalised sense of self, perceived as largely autonomous and divorced from wider networks of relationships. This seems consistent with Jayson Georges’s (2017: 17) assertion in The 3D Gospel that, of the three types of culture he identifies, those described as ‘guilt–innocence cultures’ found in individualistic societies (mostly western) are where people internalise the codes of conduct and the feelings associated with transgressing these.

In contrast, a second type of culture, ‘shame–honor cultures[,] describes collectivist cultures (common in the East)’ (Georges, 2017: 11). People in these cultures know that their survival is dependent on the group, so prioritise preserving harmonious relations over asserting individual preferences (Georges and Baker, 2016: 56). One person’s shame is to the detriment of all:

in June 1944, the US Office of War Information assigned the American anthropologist Ruth Benedict to investigate and explain Japan’s ‘exceedingly different habits of acting and thinking’ . . . She explained the basic cultural difference as follows: ‘Shame cultures rely on external sanctions for good behaviour, not, as guilt cultures do, on an internalised conviction of sin’. (Georges and Baker, 2016: 16)

Western psychologists treat shame as an emotion. Yet, in The Global Gospel, Werner Mischke quotes Zeba Crook, who explains that the ancient Mediterranean world viewed shame as ‘a demotion in the eyes of the public court of reputation’. Mischke goes on to say:

In cultures characterised by the pivotal cultural value of honour and shame, one’s concept of ‘self’ is established primarily by one’s family or community . . . Bruce Malina asks, ‘What sort of personality sees life nearly exclusively in terms of honour? For starters, such a person would always see himself or herself through the eyes of others’. (Mischke, 2015: 39)

However, I wonder if there really is such a dichotomy. Where does this idealised view of self come from if not from the external cultural messages with which we are constantly bombarded? Also, Georges and Baker (2016), in their book Ministering in Honor–Shame Cultures, note the growing number of voices acknowledging a shift in the West from being predominately ‘guilt-based’ societies to those much more preoccupied with shame. They quote Andy Crouch from the magazine Christianity Today describing North American culture as ‘starting to look something like a postmodern fame–shame culture’ (Georges and Baker, 2016: 119) and cite the rise of social media as creating the illusion of relationship and meaningful connectedness, while at the same time further alienating and isolating us from one another behind two-dimensional screens. The anonymity this affords allows us to hide our true selves and present a digital version of ourselves that we consider more likeable and socially acceptable. Yet this disparity also makes for greater vulnerability. Our existence must now accommodate the constant anxiety of having inconsistencies between the two versions of reality exposed, and the potential for becoming a victim of ridicule and humiliation as a consequence.

Is it possible, or even desirable, to be totally shame-free?

Both Robin Stockitt in Restoring the Shamed and the author of Transforming Shame, Jill McNish, draw heavily on insights from depth psychology on shame. Stockitt highlights the normal and healthy stage in child development when human beings first experience shame in order that they learn what behaviours are acceptable. This is an essential survival mechanism as it ensures that we remain assimilated and therefore protected as part of a group (Stockitt, 2012: 58). Shame acts as a useful deterrent: ‘The threat of potential shame acts like a cultural stop sign, helping to preserve dignity and avoid offensive actions’ (Georges and Baker, 2016: 15). And when we do overstep the mark, not all shaming is inappropriate. Shame can be a right and proper response to sin and wrongdoing. It can lead to repentance and reconciliation (Georges and Baker, 2016: 144).

McNish (2004) talks about the importance of the discomfort caused by shame as a motivation to confront and negotiate the fundamental tension in the human condition between what she calls the ‘competing desires for separation and union, between wanting to pull apart and longing to draw close, between wanting to be part of the collective and wanting to be one’s own authentic and creative individual person’ (2). Extensively quoting Boisen, Freud and Jung, this tension is explained as us desperately wanting to regain the feeling of being one with our mothers in complete neediness and intimacy, but then fighting for our independence and autonomy as we realise that we are a separate being who can make our own unique contribution to the world. McNish exhorts us to grapple with this conflict, which she describes as ‘the Godless vortex of shame’ (20). She points out that the greatest mystics and theologians of the Christian faith only achieved such spiritual maturity as a result of self-knowledge due to braving this vortex and wrestling with these competing needs. She states: ‘Only by standing in the vortex and admitting and confronting the tension that is the experience of shame can we achieve transformation’ (61).

Yet the psychologists June Tangney and Ronda Dearing are keen to point out that much of the previous research on the effects of shame has not sufficiently distinguished between shame and guilt. They assert that there is a positive or negative way to process and respond to our inevitable failures and transgressions. One leads to taking responsibility and seeking to make amends, the other to aggression, self-loathing and harmful addictions: ‘Our longitudinal study provides the first solid empirical findings linking shame and guilt to bottom line “moral” and “immoral” behaviours. The pattern is pretty clear cut: guilt is good; shame is bad’ (Tangney and Dearing, 2002: 136). This is because guilt is attached to a behaviour that can be changed, whereas shame belies a self-identity which is much harder to acknowledge and modify.

Unhealthy or ‘toxic’ shame

When considering the effects of toxic or debilitating shame, I will reference the experience of a friend, Carol, who was a member of my missional community, Sacred Space Kingston. She has been socialised in a western culture and understands shame to be the painful emotion which has at its root the belief that one is, or is seen by others to be, of less value and thus unworthy of love or high regard due to one’s demeaning behaviours, attitudes, expectations or life circumstances (Allen, 2010: 43). She says that the belief that underlies her shame is: ‘I’m unlovable – not worthy of connection. I believed that I was stupid, ugly, a failure, a bad person, a fraud, selfish, didn’t matter, unlovable, I shouldn’t have been born and I hated myself’ (Clack, 2018). Carol attempts to explain her shame as being a consequence of negative childhood experiences that left her constantly plagued by an internal voice which dictated how she should act in order to avoid shame. These experiences included keeping other family members happy, avoiding conflict, not displaying negative emotions such as anger or sadness, not drawing attention to herself and never expressing an opinion. She recounts that, for many years, she was defined by this voice, but through psychotherapy came to accept that she could tell herself a different set of expectations. She was now free to make her own choices and change the tape. One of the ways Carol found to express this new script was through poetry. Here she articulates that she found there was an ‘Antithesis to the voices that nag’:

I can keep Dad happy

But I don’t have to

I can match his mood

But I don’t have to

I can be ill

It happens

I can cry

I wish I could cry more

I can get angry

And I do!

I can be happy

But not all the time

I am not a boy

I am a girl

And I am here

My best is good enough

I will never be perfect

I can do what I’m told

But I don’t have to!

I can be what I am expected to be

But I don’t have to

I can push boundaries

I do not have to play by the book

I can do it my way

I can choose my own friends

People I relate to

I can keep the peace

But I don’t have to

I can put myself forward into the limelight

It seems to happen anyway

I can have an opinion

I do have an opinion

And I will speak it out!

It seems so simple

When I am being spontaneous

Not in my analysing head

AND then the trigger is pulled

And I find myself

Listening to those nagging voices

Once again!! (Clack, 2017: 68–69)

However, Carol found herself, time and time again, coming up against a seemingly immovable block to her healing. Perhaps, I would like to suggest, a therapeutic approach that focuses on the self being able to enact its own healing is not sufficient on its own. For Carol, this mental conflict between competing voices became incredibly wearing. In addition, one is forced to consider how much of Carol’s rationale for her distress and depression has been arrived at by what she has been exposed to in the media, as well as at the suggestion of mental health practitioners. It will then be, at least to some extent, culturally determined. I am also aware of people afflicted with shame practising ‘self compassion’ (Neff, 2018). While I think that there is some value in this as well, I wonder if it too reflects the West’s preoccupation with the autonomy of the individual, and thus reinforces a flawed belief that healing and wholeness can be exclusively in our own hands.

I do not believe it is God’s intention that anyone should be condemned to live either in shame or double-mindedness. Jesus declared at the start of his public ministry that:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because . . . He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. (Luke 4:18–19)

Like a refrain that periodically repeats in a much longer piece of music, a motif in literature is a theme which recurs throughout the narrative to indicate its broader symbolic significance (Mischke, 2015: 181). For Georges and Baker:

I first explored biblical verses about honour and shame, and then noticed a larger theological motif – the removal of shame and the restoration of honour lies at the centre of God’s salvation. Shame is not just a social issue plaguing human relations, but a spiritual reality separating us from God as well. Ever since the fall, humans have been in a state of shame. But in Christ, our honour is restored as we enter God’s family. God cares greatly about restoring honour, so much that he willingly bore the ultimate shame of the cross. Jesus is the solution for shame. (Georges and Baker, 2016: 24–25)

So, how does this happen? I found Mischke’s book, The Global Gospel, sadly lacking when contemplating this question. I applaud his attempt to highlight the need for understanding the honour–shame dynamic for the sake of more appropriate contextualisation when embarking on global mission. But he seemed to imply that one would experience healing from shame at the point of salvation and the moment of believing in the power of Jesus to restore and make whole. This may be true for some. However, the friend I quoted, as well as myself and many others who have shared their ongoing struggles with shame, did not experience such liberation at conversion. So then, there must be a way in which we can appropriate this truth as we ‘continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2:12).

Healing by unconditional love

What, then, might be the role of relationship in securing lasting healing from shame? One of the things that particularly struck me on researching shame was the following comment by missionary to the Japanese Norman Kraus, quoted in Recovering the Scandal of the Cross by Joel Green and Mark Baker (2000: 163): ‘Shame does not respond to punishment; rather it is love that banishes shame’. I have, therefore, sought to offer unconditional love and acceptance to those I know have issues with shame. This is even more challenging when applying this knowledge and wisdom to one’s self. A way in which I have sought to action this is by regularly employing a shame-alleviating spiritual practice devised by the author and psychiatrist David F Allen (2010) in his book Shame: The Human Nemesis. It aims to move us from a place of shame to one of love.

Allen (2010) begins by encouraging a stopping or pausing to appreciate what he calls the ‘still-point’ where we become aware of the presence of the Creator (248). I like that he addresses the effects of shame on our bodies, as well as its mental and emotional consequences. He highlights how shame, fear and anger cause physiological arousal, increasing the heart rate, raising blood pressure and even causing one’s intelligence quotient to drop. He then says that we should face shame directly by bringing to mind two or three of the most shameful or hurtful experiences of our life. By doing this, he believes that we reveal ‘our deep seated shame core with its trail of shame scripts, thoughts and voices and perceptions’ (248). We can then assess the connection between the past hurts and what is being experienced in the present. Allen adds: ‘The gift of experiencing a shame schema is that it allows us to pinpoint the trigger giving us the opportunity to reduce its negative effect on us’ (249). We are then encouraged to actively help ourselves relax by breathing deeply and remaining for a few minutes in silence, before turning to God in prayer:

The shift from shame to love occurs as we become anchored in the Eternal Love which is always there for us. Surrendering ourselves to his unchanging love enables us to shift from shame to love by a simple prayer such as, ‘Lord God, have mercy upon me and forgive my resistance to your love. I surrender my heart and shame to your healing and unfailing love. Amen’. (251)

However, something else Allen recommends, which I really find helpful, is to then replace the negativity that has been acknowledged and released with what is good and hopeful in our lives. He suggests both compiling a list of all the people we have known who have shown us love and imagining ourselves enjoying a sacred place, somewhere we have felt happy and have previously been able to receive God’s love. Finally, he exhorts us to find three things to be grateful for, and to what he calls ‘practice love’ by seeking to be present in the moment and experience every encounter with someone else as either an expression or appeal for love in the world (254). While this shame-overcoming spiritual practice might also appear to be a tool that endows the individual with the power to heal oneself, there is a strong emphasis on the need to open oneself up to God’s love and bring to mind all the other significant relationships that have made love real and tangible for us. Allen also encourages us to extend God’s grace to everyone else we come into contact with. I have found this more systematic approach very helpful, yet it still feels like attempting to treat the symptoms rather than dealing with the root cause. I have recently observed – and Carol’s anecdotal evidence supports this – that profoundly shaming experiences can be relived over and over again as contemporary events or conversations trigger the emotional memory. Therefore, is once-and-for-all healing ever possible? I have to believe that living in the light of Jesus’s unconditional love as the antidote to shame does indeed make this a distinct and achievable possibility.

Encountering Jesus afresh

The experience of my friend Carol, which I recounted earlier, is not the end of her story. In October 2017, she had a profound encounter that totally transformed her. She went on a retreat entitled ‘Loved and cherished – reflections on Song of Songs’. Up to this point, Carol admits that reading the book in the Bible entitled Song of Songs or Song of Solomon had made her intensely uncomfortable due to the relational intimacy that is recorded there. However, she was determined to stretch herself and put herself in an environment where the yearning to feel loved and known, just like the beloved, might potentially be met. This was so that, in future, she might not just give an intellectual assent to something that she had been told is true – that God’s all-encompassing, unsurpassing and totally unconditional love removes shame – but would have an experience of it, such that she might know it to be real. Once again, Carol became aware of the blockage that stopped her feeling and receiving, and being transformed. She describes it as being like a stone – a stone that represented all the fear of being hurt and rejected. Carol likens the stone to the one that sealed Jesus in the tomb after his crucifixion (Mark 15:45). She wondered whether the ‘stone’ over her heart had ever been moved away before. She was also struck by an account of the resurrection that has the grave clothes being left behind in the empty tomb (John 20:6–8). Carol compares shame to something you wear – a hoodie zipped all the way up to the chin, with the hood pulled up as far over the head as possible.

Then, Carol describes how she met Jesus in the garden and, despite the overwhelming desire to get closer to Him, found her shame to be in the way. She became aware of needing to take off a coat of shame that covered her entirely. And, while it felt like it kept her safe and fitted her perfectly, it was a weight that held her down, suffocating her and preventing true intimacy. She asked Jesus: ‘Will I be cold when I take it off?’ He answered: ‘No. My arms will be round you. Trust me. Take it off, unwrap it, leave it on the floor. Step out of it and live. Experience a lighter you and the freedom to fly’ (Clack, 2018). Carol recounts, in the company of a small group of prayerful Christians, physically enacting the shrouding of herself in a blanket, then slowly, mindfully, purposefully taking it off, until it lay in a heap on the floor. Immediately, Carol says she felt the tension and pain in her head, neck and shoulders released (Allen, 2010: 50). She stood tall and was wowed by the amazingness of God’s love. She folded the blanket, put it under the cross and walked away.

WOW!!

Do you know how amazing you are?

You are a work of art

Lovingly and carefully

Knitted together cell by cell in your mother’s wound

Eye colour chosen

The hairs on your head counted

Created with care

Perfection

Do you know how amazing you are?

Not the person next to you

What you do or do not do

What you can and cannot do

You are unique

Individual

Highly valued

Do you know how amazing you are?

At this moment in time

Whatever your circumstance

Or stage of life

You are precious

Adored

Priceless. (Clack, 2018)

Carol is now convinced that she is not the same person she was before this interaction with Christ. The competing voices in her head have gone. She now says that she makes a habit of looking people in the eye, actively saying hello to bus drivers and chatting to strangers. She is no longer constantly worried, but still keeps checking to see if the weight of shame has truly been lifted off her. Her testimony is that it has. She can now discern what she needs to take responsibility for and what emotional baggage belongs to someone else. The depression has dissipated and an anger that was always just below the surface, liable to erupt at any time, has totally disappeared. Other people have noticed the difference in her too. She concludes: ‘I’m not quite sure who I am. I don’t recognise this new me, but she doesn’t frighten me. A new journey has begun’ (Clack, 2018).

The power of story

Is ritual enactment in order to tell a different story the way to find total healing from toxic shame? Brown (2015: 41), in her book Rising Strong, says this: ‘Rumbling with our story and owning our truth in order to write a new, more courageous ending transforms who we are and how we engage with the world’. I have encountered this idea before. Mann’s (2005) Atonement for a ‘Sinless’ Society considers the power of narrative to re-engage postmoderns with the Gospel. He asserts: ‘while narrative (or ontological) coherence may be desired, many people live, or merely “exist”, with a narrative in-coherence – a breakdown in the story they are able to tell, which results in the disruption of the self’ (Mann, 2005: 64). And even in the secular arena, we are being exhorted to change our stories. In the Richard Dimbleby lecture for the BBC on the 100th anniversary of women being granted the vote in Great Britain, Jeanette Winterson (2018) reflected: ‘Society changes as we tell different stories, when we tell the story again. Women in the 20th century kickstarted a more inclusive history, a better set of stories, His-story had to include Her-story’. I think, as we saw in Carol’s experience, the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are and why we experience what we do are incredibly influential. They have a way of conferring identity and can either reinforce powerlessness or help the marginalised find their voice such that they are able to overcome adversity and triumph against the odds.

Another way in which honour is bestowed or withdrawn in collectivist societies is via lineage or family name. Throughout the Roman Empire, JE Lendon asserts, ‘[a]lthough honour was a personal quality, its aura extended over households and connections by blood and marriage: a man’s family was part and parcel of his social persona’ (Mischke, 2015: 142). In the western world too, one’s name is an important means of expressing, and having recognised, identity and value, except, in this context I would argue, it is more about honouring the uniqueness and individuality of the person in question, it having been largely separated from identification with a network of family relationships and a genetic or material inheritance. On a recent visit to Hull, in the north of England, I was presented with a wonderful book recounting the stories of women who have experienced street prostitution first-hand. And, it was relayed to me how easy it can be for already marginalised people to feel further robbed of their identity, and potentially re-shamed, despite an intention to actually protect them. For this particular project, it was a condition of publication made by the funders that the women’s names were changed in order to provide them with anonymity. However, the contributors actually took exception to this. They felt that, having found their voice, they promptly had it taken away again. This was because they could no longer own their stories and be properly seen as the person behind the recollections. At the launch event, one by one the women stood up and said their name, followed by who they had been called in the book. In recounting our stories, then, there is a need for them to be received and have their validity acknowledged in the company of others.

In addition, the process of producing the book was done in community. A writer was employed to record the content from the women involved as they met regularly together to sew and do craft activities. Sharing their stories with one another also became a profoundly affirming and healing endeavour. The writer, Emma Crick, who became more accurately the custodian of their stories, said of the experience:

Over the four year period of the project, ‘love’ changed the research methodology as false divisions between us fell away. Questions about who really held the expertise, and what this meant, were gradually laid to rest until it became clear that the voices of the women themselves should be heard entirely without analysis or interpretation. (Hull Lighthouse Project, 2017: 5)

Yet, tragically, a number of the women participants have died since publication. I wonder if the positive effects of owning and drawing wider public attention to the abuses that led them to having such difficult lives stopped short of complete transformation. I am sure that they received a measure of healing through the friendships that were deepened by sharing with one another in mutual honesty and vulnerability, but maybe it is only through a Holy Spirit intervention that any of us who struggle with issues of shame can be totally restored – or, like Jesus after his resurrection, we will always bear the scars. How is it then that some people are able to believe a new, reframed story such that it is imbued with the power to set them on a different path to the trajectory on which their life seems currently fixed?

Stories of honour-status reversals

The Bible, too, is full of ‘her-stories’, and many of them recount what could be referred to as honour-status reversals. ‘Honour-status reversal is when a person, family or people have whatever degree of esteem, respect, privilege, power or authority before a community turned the other way around’ (Mischke, 2015: 181). This is the Kingdom of God that Jesus’s life and death inaugurated, heralded by His mother Mary as the Magnificat, as well as outlined by Jesus Himself in the Beatitudes. Under His sovereignty, God redefines what is honourable and turns the values of the world upside down.

Let us consider a specific story of Jesus dealing with a woman’s shame and giving her a new identity. In Luke 7:36–50, Jesus is dishonoured when he visits the home of Simon the Pharisee. An important source of shame and honour in the Majority World is rituals associated with purity and cleanliness (Georges and Baker, 2016: 56). Jesus’s ministry challenged who was considered unclean and therefore worthy of exclusion. It was the custom in 1st-century Palestine to make provision for a guest to wash their feet when offering hospitality. Yet Simon does not extend this courtesy to Jesus. However, a woman who ‘lived a sinful life’, and had previously received forgiveness from Jesus, arrives at Simon’s house. She washes his feet with her tears, dries them with her hair and anoints him with an expensive jar of perfume. By doing this, she has exposed herself to further shame, as these were considered intimate acts reserved for one’s husband in privacy:

Before Jesus spoke up in her defence, all the eyes in the room would have been glued on the woman – shaming eyes of accusation. When Jesus began to speak he became the scandal, and the eyes of accusation would have shifted to him . . . Jesus loved her so much he was willing to suffer shame to save her from being shamed . . . This incident marks a common pattern in Jesus’ ministry of honouring the shamed via public association. (Georges and Baker, 2016: 101)

This encounter seems to theologically support my assertion that rewriting our own stories may not be sufficient to remove shame on its own. Is ‘narrative therapy’, for example, just another attempt by individualistic westerners to alleviate their own suffering and help themselves without recourse to the divine or the love and commitment of their fellow creatures?

A further insight from honour–shame cultures, which I think might speak to the internalised western quest to find freedom from debilitating shame, is the role of a patron to grant honour. Patron–client relationships are of unequal status, where the patron has responsibility to provide for the needs of the client and, in return, the client owes loyalty, gratitude and praise (Mischke, 2015: 122). Typically, the client must be deemed sufficiently worthy of patronage. If we equate God with being our patron, despite the unequal status we hold and our inability to be worthy of honour before the Almighty, He extends His grace. In return, the patron has the power to lift the client from shame and disgrace: ‘God not only removes our shame but also transforms our shame into glory. His sovereign grace brings together our broken shards to form a beautiful mosaic. Shame and disgrace are tools for God’s purposes’ (Georges and Baker, 2016: 116). So, in order to find healing, as I have suggested, owning and positively reframing our stories might not be enough. There is something for which we are reliant on God. It is Him who bestows a crown of beauty instead of ashes, anoints us with the oil of joy instead of mourning and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isa. 61:3). The most magnificent patron of them all initiates and fulfils any obligation to humanity in the death and resurrection of His Son. This is the greatest status reversal there has ever been.

Conclusion

As I hope this article exploring healing from the negative effects of shame has demonstrated, there is much that can be learned and helpfully applied from the experience of honour–shame cultures to assist us in the West in finding greater freedom and wholeness in Christ. I especially want to challenge and critique the individualism that permeates every facet of our postmodern and, largely, post-Christian culture. It isolates us from one another, scorns our need for relationship and diminishes the power of God to positively intervene in order to enact transformation for the benefit of all He has created. I think that there are many useful tools and helpful insights from complementary disciplines, such as sociology and psychology, which can aid us in the recovery from toxic or debilitating levels of shame. These include reframing the stories we tell ourselves, self-compassion exercises and finding our voice. However, I believe that whether we make use of these practices or not, it is actually through connection that the most profound and lasting healing will be appropriated. This is connection with God and/or other human persons, as well as the earth and all living things.

Although I do not subscribe to the idea that complete wholeness necessarily happens at the point of conversion, I would not want to rule out the possibility entirely either. The Spirit of God is unpredictable and uncontrollable, and far be it from me to prescribe how and when God acts. Yet I keep coming back to McNish (2004) and her assertion that grappling with shame is a way in which God meets us in our most basic humanness. There we are encouraged to confront our darkness and not just reveal our light. By inviting Him, and others, into this vulnerability and discomfort, we are able to attain greater assuredness of our intrinsic worth and grow more fully into the likeness and stature of Christ, as an adopted co-heir of His Kingdom. I hope, therefore, as I continue to rise to this challenge and am changed, I will inspire others to run the gauntlet of shame and attain the depth and maturity that Christ aspires for all of us.

I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. (John 17:21, New Living Translation)