Blessing or Curse?

I woke up in a fog that morning, dark thoughts already pressing on my body. I had gone to bed the night before with a heavy heart. A text from one family member and an email from another were both full of accusation. Whether I meant to or not, I had disappointed, disturbed, and offended both of them. I did the very best I could to honor their feelings and share an apology and still get a good night's sleep, but the self-recriminations continued overnight.

Can you relate to this? I am quick to offer understanding and forgiveness to another person but can rarely or easily offer it to myself. Despite having good intentions, it was disruptive to know my comments landed poorly on and hurt people I care deeply about. Even after a heartfelt response, I still felt out of sorts with prickly skin and a desire to hide in my shell. I sat silently in the car on the way to morning mass, swirling in my inner mess. My husband noticed my withdrawal and tried lovingly to draw me out.

"Do you have any words for me?"

My ugly inner feelings emerged as ugly outer words not directed at, but certainly landing on, my loving husband. The cherry on top was my declaration that I didn't even want to tell him any of this because all he ever says is "I'm sorry" and that just makes me mad. I am grateful that Ralph and I have had a great deal of experience wading through each other’s inner swamps. As I slammed the car door in the church parking lot, he reached for my hand. I stuck them both deeper into my pockets muttering, "I can't."

I knew the emotion that was now bubbling over and stinging the corner of my eyes with tears, that prickled my whole body and made me want to get small and smaller, that made it feel next to impossible to walk embodied into a church and sit under the lights in a pew for all to see: shame.

Shame and I are well-acquainted. I have spent years wading through and learning to identify and metabolize shame. I understand its symptoms in my body and how I am programmed to respond. Shame seeks to isolate and antagonize. It craves secrecy. I wanted to hide.

I have hidden in church before -- desperate for Jesus but equally desperate not to be seen. I have curled up in the pew, head down and handkerchief pressed to my eyes willing myself to be invisible. I have hidden in the bathrooms. Once I sought refuge in the furthest back corner of the empty choir loft tucked small between the extra chairs and the organ pipes. In the safety of the hidden nook, I could cry and pray.

Shame is the hissing voice of the enemy of my soul whispering perfectly crafted lies to derail my self-worth, dignity, peace -- anything it takes to convince me I am NOT the beloved daughter of God.

Shame tells me I am bad. It thrives on my history of self-rejection. It feeds on my tendency for self-condemnation. It relies on the fact that for most of my life I lived under the curse. Henri Nouwen writes about living under the curse in his book Life of the Beloved. (p.97) “When we have cursed ourselves or allowed others to curse us, it is very tempting to explain all the brokenness we experience as an expression or confirmation of this curse.”

Living under the curse means my default is that the voice of the critic, the voice of the enemy, the voice of my relatives saying I was out of line or offensive all feel true. I have criticized, rejected, and condemned myself for so long that it is very familiar to look for and agree with criticism, rejection, and condemnation from other people.

Shame storms can be fast and furious. As Ralph and I walked into church, mass was already starting. I was desperate to hide but also aware that I had hurt my husband by rebuffing him and didn't want to make things harder by leaving him while I hid in the choir loft alone. I grabbed tissues from the bathroom and we entered the sanctuary and sat in the back pew, my head down on my lap.

The battle waged in my head and heart and body. Unhealed trauma and decades of trauma-conditioned responses colluded with the enemy of my soul to tear down the foundation of my identity as a beloved daughter of God, abundantly loved and delightful to the Lord. I knew that nothing I could say or do, no sin large or small, could EVER separate me from the love the Lord held for me. And yet the battle waged on.

It was a gift of the Holy Spirit that I heard clear as day the words the priest read from Deuteronomy during the 1st reading:

"I have set life and death before you: blessings and curses. Choose life that it may be well with you." (Deuteronomy 30:19)

I knew the truth. I knew the lies. My skin crawled with the all-too-familiar slither of the enemy's tactics as they tried to gain ground. Some days it takes heroic faith to believe that the still, small voice of God is true.  

Especially in grief.  Many of us carried shame before the loss of our child, but when our hearts are broken open in grief, that shame is exposed and compounded by the trauma of child loss. There may be lies you struggle with after your child died:

Was it my fault? Did my body fail? Are my genetics to blame for how my child died?

If only I had done this or not done that, the accident would not have happened.

If I were a better mother or father, my child wouldn’t have been using drugs.

If I were more this or less that, I could have prevented my child’s suicide.  

We are always in a war for our identity.  After the death of a child, it can be even harder to have the energy to fight.

We are so broken. So tired. So doubting and angry and weak. 

The miracle is that we don’t have to fight.  We just have to choose.

Every day, every attack, every lie, every shame storm -- I have to choose. Will I falter and fall and give in to the lies of the enemy of my soul? Will I accept the blame and the shame and the guilt?  Will I live under the curse?

Or will I claim the victory that is already won? Will I CHOOSE the blessing?

Will I surrender my broken heart to the Lord and let him love me, even in sorrow, even in death?

Will I haul myself off the floor of the church and reach for my husband's hand and lift my eyes to the cross at the words of the priest and choose life, that it may be well with me. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Jesus is powerful and faithful and merciful and kind, but He also lets us choose. We have the awesome responsibility of our own free will.

It doesn't take much. Just a small whisper of his name on my lips - Jesus. A cry of desperation:  I can’t do this on my own anymore.  I need you. Please help me, Lord. Please carry my grief and heal my heart.

Every day I inch closer to living more in the blessing than in the curse. Trauma and grief take a long time to heal and old ruts from old stories and old wounds involve a slow, tender process of restoration from a kind and merciful Savior. But it is so worth it.

This is letting myself be loved. This is knowing the truth and preaching it to myself every day. This is living in freedom -- not that there won't be battles, but that I know the victory is already mine.

Some days, the bravest thing I will do is choosing to live under the blessing. Praying for you and your broken that you can let the Lord love you right where you are.