The sins of our youth are embarrassing and perhaps outright shameful. And more often than not we’d like to just forget our past and pretend it never happened. But this only fuels our shame and isolation. Telling the fullness of our story – a story of redemption is our path forward to overcoming shame.
Like Adam and Eve, our first reaction to the presence of shame is to hide. While we might do this physically, it certainly plays out relationally. We live behind masks and share only the parts of our story we believe others will find acceptable. Unfortunately, this perpetuates our loneliness. When our fig leaf is all we offer then this is also the only thing others can love.
To be sure, it is risky to come out of hiding, drop our mask, and bear our naked souls to each other – allowing others to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of our story. Of course, some risk is inherent and not everyone can be trusted with every aspect of our story. But some of the risk can be minimized as we learn to tell our stories properly. Our story is not a tragedy, but one of redemption, and we must learn to tell it as such.
This means the focus of our story is not on all the bad and shameful things we’ve done, but on how Christ has washed us and made us new. We don’t downplay the ugliness of sin, but we don’t let it have the final word in our story either. And it’s hard to continue living in shame when our past now allows us to make a big deal of God. Why would we hide when we get to brag about what God has done in our life?
In the end, your story doesn’t end in tragedy, but redemption. Learn to tell your story in full and overcome the shame.
Photo by Erika Giraud on Unsplash
