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(This is the second post in a series about overcoming shame and past regrets. To catch up, check out the first post here.)
The woman shoved the too-short sleeves of her sweater up to her elbows. Better to pretend this was a fashion choice rather than the truth, which were arms that stuck out too far for the average-sized cardigan.
The person she came to see was already settled on the park bench, facing away. Broken clouds scattered fingers of light on the guest’s long hair, making it flash in copper and umber and wheat.
“Guest” was an appropriate word – the Bench Woman’s time was limited. Speaking of time, it was now or never. Arriving Woman descended on the bench. Her jeans made no noise as they pressed on the sun-bleached wood. Side by side, the two women could have been twins, except for their expressions.
Arriving Woman looked at her companion. Bench Woman’s eyes were young. Young, eager yet worried, hopeful but fearful. Confused. Arriving Woman’s features were marked with lines of conflict between her brows.
Overhead, a dark bank of rain clouds tousled the edges of cotton clouds sprayed with light. Even the heavens mirrored Arriving Woman’s agitation. Quickly they resolved into one emotion, tightly coiled and ready to spring: Determination.
It was time to make an end of things so something new could begin. She’d already waited too long.
Arriving Woman hesitated. Bench Woman smiled. She would wait. She had always been waiting.
Arriving Woman found her voice: “Thank you for coming. I need to get some things off my chest. I’ve got decisions to make and no will to make them. Maybe you can help.”
“I’m here.” Bench Woman replied, always eager to please.
“Yes, you always are and that’s part of the problem. It’s like this…” Arriving Woman turned, tucking her knee against the bench back. “I forgive you. I forgive you for making choices that hurt me and hurt others.
I forgive you for saying No to God and Yes to yourself. You knew better. You knew the choice you were making, and I forgive you. God is better than me. He forgave you long ago and now it’s my turn.
I forgive you for believing that you could make circumstances change your heart instead of your heart choosing your circumstances. I’m still paying the price for that. I forgive you for fearing life more than you loved it.
I forgive you for being too proud even when you hated the girl in the mirror. And I forgive you for being strong when Jesus called you to be weak so His strength could be made perfect in you.”
Bench Woman looked away. The rainclouds were retreating and now made a thin regiment against the advance of sieging white clouds.
Arriving Woman closed her eyes but continued. “I forgive you and I see you, maybe for the first time.”
“And what do you see?”
“I see a woman who wanted to feel safe. A woman who wanted love and fought to find it. A woman who made the best choice she could with what she knew.”
She shaded her brow from the caress of sunlight pooling on the bench. “You taught me that I can’t hide anymore just waiting for good to find me. Living means having two hands out: one cupped to receive goodness and one hand reaching out to take hold, help up, and harvest blessing.
You are a woman who didn’t know just how brave she could be if..” Arriving Woman’s voice trailed off.
“If?” Bench Woman prompted.
“If I could only forgive myself. Will you forgive me for not asking sooner?”
“Always.” Bench Woman’s eyes softened. Already her frame seemed to fade. Light crept through the diaphanous body, a mirage of a woman.
Arriving Woman solidified. Her lines grew bolder and colored over with a heavy hand. “Thank you. I needed that. For both of us.” Arriving Woman rose from the bench and smiled down at Bench Woman. The expanse between her brows was smooth and untroubled.
“Take me with you?” Bench Woman said.
“I’m taking the best of you with me.” Arrived Woman replied, and strolled farther down the path. She shrugged her shoulders and the too-short sweater slid down. Arrived Woman balled it up, tucked it in her elbow, the golden arms of light stroking her hair and making it blaze like a woman afire.
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My vision for this second post on shame just wouldn’t sharpen into focus.
I wrestled with how to fit random thoughts and feelings into a shame post. But what I kept coming back to were three choices in my early twenties that went awry, and one decision I’m wrestling with today.
Weeks of meetings with my counselor, a few self-help books (Thank you to The Next Right Thing by Emily P. Freeman), and intense conversations with my long-suffering mother did little to move me in the right direction. I simply could not choose.
Then I realized that my three poor choices were muddying the waters. I couldn’t sail in the right direction until the waters cleared. Sorting out my complicated motives and feelings from 10 to 16 years ago was the work of now.
Here’s the thing: What if the “character flaw” (as I saw it) that caused me to make poor choices back then was now influencing me to make another bad choice?
Embarrassment and shame from three choices long ago keeps me stuck today.
Are you stuck because you haven’t reflected on why and how you made a poor choice in the past? Maybe you, like me, fear that you’re dragging along some super power character flaw like your shadow trailing behind. A character flaw that can tear down what you build unless it’s named, called out, and killed.
Let me share with you questions and truth statements that helped me tease out the threads of clarity from a big messy ball of feelings.
Was this an immoral choice or just a choice that didn’t work out?
Did you make a choice to sin or were the results of an amoral decision not what you’d hoped? In Emily P. Freeman’s book The Next Right Thing, the author points out that in our culture, we tend to reflect on choices that turned out successfully as “right or good” and decisions that had unpleasant results as “bad or wrong.” Have you fallen victim to this belief?
My first regretful decision was to go away to a university in the city – not the best choice for a suburban/country girl who likes her space – and live on the 14th floor of an overcrowded dorm.
My motivation? Help me overcome my fear of independence; my fear of everything that took me away from home and security, really. This was the equivalent of jumping into the deep end of the pool to teach myself to swim. I sank. I fell into a deep depression, gained weight, flunked all of my classes, and slunk home in shame.
The surprising truth? I made the best choice I could with the information I had.
Years of experience and reflection – learning – taught me the truth that I didn’t know back then. We all wish we could teach our younger selves what we know now, but we can’t. And we can’t blame our younger selves for not knowing. We can only cradle those battle-scarred truths to our wounded hearts and heal.
Did you make the best decision you could with the information you had?
What did that old choice teach you?
This question is related to the first: we made a decision with the information we had, but maybe the information was wrong. Failure taught us truth. What did you learn from the consequences of your choice?
It took a second painful and public decision to drive home my own lesson: Outside circumstances are poor teachers for inward change. My heart changes my perspective of my circumstances, but circumstances can never create in me the heart God wants to form in me.
Failure, however, is a gifted teacher. We may never be thankful for it but we can accept the gift. Only a fool learns the same lesson again and again without making adjustments to his behavior. And we’re no fools, ladies.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Winston Churchill
What were you afraid of when you made that choice?
Oh, how much failure has been driven by fear! At least, that’s true for me. Fear of not fitting in rather than the desire to be a good friend. Fear of hating life rather than the desire to explore. Fear of rejection rather than the desire to offer my best.
Think back to your decision: what were you afraid of?
Rejection?
Loneliness?
Being alone?
Being afraid?
Missing out?
Making the wrong choice?
Losing?
Fear is a powerful motivator if we harness it’s power to pull us in the right direction. My healthy fear of hell and judgment pushed me toward repentance. Now it’s power over me has lifted because I received the goodness on the other side: forgiveness, acceptance, love, purpose in Jesus Christ.
Ask yourself: What’s the powerful “other side” I can take from my fear?
Now a related question:
What did I hope for when I made that choice?
Chances are, you made your regretful decision because you were hoping for good.
Even when the hoped-for results fail to appear, we learn: This method didn’t work. But why did I want it, do I still want it, and how can I get it the right way?
In my first and second embarrassing decisions (okay, I’ll put you out of your curious misery: pudgy, shy, private, quiet, no-team-sports ever, out-of-shape, fearful-of-competition Janet decided to join the Marines. You can guess how that went), I was hoping to achieve freedom from fear and unreasonable inhibition, courage to accomplish my goals, and independence. And to make my parents proud.
I failed. And I failed because this was the wrong method, not the wrong goal.
Was your failed choice an attempt to take hold of the right thing in the wrong way?
What did failure teach you about the right way?
Did you have an affair to feel loved, attractive, accepted and special?
Did you take a job you now hate because you wanted to feel accomplished and arrived?
Did you have children so you could feel needed? (Kids are great – NOT a failure here – but what if you still feel unfulfilled?)
Do you shop too much and overspend on home décor because you long to feel a sense of belonging and purpose?
The right way for you may not be the right way for me. We are all unique creations and our paths are ours to walk. Jumping onto the wrong path for the right reasons will still get you lost. How can you become more you the right way?
Did your decision come on the heels of an ending or a beginning? Or in a place where you thought you were strong?
Endings transition us to beginnings, as Emily P. Freeman points out in her podcast The Next Right Thing (same name as the book), episode 82: Find the Beginning in the Ending. Sometimes those beginnings leave us on unsteady ground.
My third poor decision was to date a man who did not share my devout faith in Jesus. He was a Muslim. My heart battled between my desire to obey Jesus and my budding feelings.
Eventually, feelings won and devolved into an immoral lifestyle. What shocked my spirit and shook my confidence – even years later – was that I plunged into this lifestyle on the very heels of the greatest spiritual awakening of my life.
I was a burning spiritual fire. Then I was crashing and burning.
Was my faith so weak? Not weak, no. Untested. And when I was tested, I failed. Rather publicly, I might add.
If you are stuck, unable to make decisions, perhaps it’s because you’re in a similar ending or beginning as you were back then.
But there’s a difference: now you’ve been tested. You’re wiser, experienced, and equipped. When you face your enemy again, you are more capable than ever of conquering it.
Hours before Jesus was tried before the Sanhedrin and condemned to death, Peter swore he would never deny his friend. That very evening, Peter failed, that old cock crowed, and Peter wept with bitter regret.
But then Jesus rose from the dead and re-commission Peter to “feed my lambs.” Fast forward: Peter preaches boldly that Jesus is Lord, risen from the dead for the forgiveness of sins. In Jesus’s name, he heals a lame man. The uproar and the glorification of God gets Peter a swift reward: he’s hauled before the Pharisees, Sadduccees and scribes, who order him to preach no more in this Name. Peter is facing the same people who condemned and murdered his friend. Yet he himself is not the same man.
He who denied knowing his Friend declares to these same men:
“…let it be made known to you all, and to allthe people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole.”Acts 4: 10
You have been declared a friend of Jesus and in His name you can be healed of your past. When you, like Peter, face these trials again, you can have victory. Your past doesn’t have to condemn your future, nor predict it.
Forgive yourself and then throw a party.
How would you feel if you begged a friend to forgive you, but she refused? Instead, she retold your offense, relived it, and reopened the wound daily?
Why do we treat ourselves that way? Have you noticed that if we talked to our friends the way we speak to ourselves, we’d be rather lonely?
The story at the beginning of this post is my exercise in forgiveness. I’m wearing that too-short purple sweater with the blue nail polish stain on the sleeve. Yes, my wrists are projecting alarmingly far out from the cuffs. As a writer, a story was the appropriate way for me to manifest forgiveness into my world.
I needed to be specific, too. General, vague terms of forgiveness are like vague terms of surrender: hard to enforce.
Your job is to make a specific list of what you are forgiving yourself for and get it out into your world. If you’re creative, then paint. Write a letter to yourself. Talk to yourself in the mirror (I couldn’t bring myself to do this – I would giggle too much, maturity not having yet caught up with me). Verbalize your list to a trusted friend.
For some, this act may be enough of a marker. Call it a gravestone for the past and a banner for the future. The old you is gone, the new you is now.
For others, you can mark this transition with an event. I’m considering throwing a Goodbye Hello Party for myself and close friends and family to truly mark – and commit myself – to forgiveness and moving forward. This is accountability at its most fun.
Never again will regret be invited to come in, sit down, and have a cup of coffee with you.
Regret will now and forever more be the souped up, testosterone-drenched pick-up truck that irritates you as it roars past your mailbox – and is quickly forgotten.