LISTEN ON

APRIL 8, 2021

My good friends, Justin and Delicia Hamilton, young adult pastors at Generation Church in Mesa, AZ invited me to come to speak about shame at their young adult Bible study, April 8, 2021. This is a recording from that gathering. Below is a transcript of my message/notes.

JOHN 8:1-11 (NLT)

A Woman Caught in Adultery

1 Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, 2 but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. 3 As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. 4 “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” 6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. 7They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. 9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” 11 “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

SHAME.

That deep-rooted anxiety that makes you feel like it's YOUR fault…and YOU’RE the problem.

SHAME.

That feeling makes you at times want to throw up or keeps you awake at night.

SHAME.

It haunts you every time you hear that voice smell that scent or see that piece of clothing those reminders you can't control that sends you back into a depressive state.

SHAME.

It’s so deeply connected to who you are as a person it's hard to separate yourself from it.

Shame says you're the problem and if you're the problem, what can you do about that? How do you remove yourself from feeling shame when you're the one who feels shameful? I know! 💡

DISTRACTIONS

Anything to get your mind off of shame.

Anything to distract you from feeling like...it's me.

Starting a business, starting a podcast, partying, new job, new church, new friends, new clothes, TV, movies, entertainment -- anything, anything, ANYTHING... to distract you from feeling SHAME. But, when the distraction is gone...the shame resurfaces. It's interesting to me that shame is so deeply connected to our identity and how we view and see ourselves.

MY STORY

I grew up in a Christian home.

My grandmother was a pastor and my granny (there IS a difference) was a church usher for 40+ years.

Christ / Christianity runs deep in my family historically.

My parents always brought us to church and did their best to teach us to love God and love people. We went to a non-denominational church in IL and from middle school to high school, there was a movement called the Purity / Abstinence movement with products called purity rings and abstinence contracts you would sign, vowing to remain was deemed to be “pure” until marriage.

In 1997, Joshua Harris wrote a book called "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" about what it means to entrust your LOVE LIFE to God. Now, my church, like many other evangelical churches at the time took his curriculum and fed it to their students like bread and water. I wouldn't write down the title of the book as the author, Joshua Harris presently recants what he wrote in that book and is currently in a season of deconstructing his faith.

But in this book Joshua shares his story of giving up dating and discovering that God has something even better—a life of sincere love, true purity, and purposeful singleness.

Huh.

Let that sink in.

Sounds "safe" doesn't it?

My youth group gravitated towards this teaching. It became the bible study we centered around. The videos we watched, the topics we were taught.

These ideas subconsciously taught me a few things:

• It taught me to be ashamed of my body and ashamed of my desires because how can you be “pure” and still have sexual desires?

• It taught me to think negatively about sex - because purity and virginity was the goal.

• It taught me that my identity and worth (and the identity and worth of those around me) was tied to virginity.

• It taught me that women are responsible for men’s actions. How modestly or unmodest I dressed was shameful.

• It Taught me modesty messages that shamed women and let men off the hook.

• It made me believe that I was out of control sexual being that was incapable of doing good therefore I couldn't trust myself or my desires.

At the time I couldn't name for you why purity culture was harmful or why it was unbeneficial for me. But I do believe for many years the deep-rooted shame I carried about my sexuality kept me from entering into a healthy relationship.

Anytime I would get close to the possibility of being in a relationship, I would move from a subconscious to conscious self-sabotage because I couldn’t quite figure out how to be in a healthy dating relationship and still be pure.

My desires and the growth of my sexuality would lead me to think, “I wasn't ready, this wasn't for me, I wanted to focus on myself, I needed to get my life together…” -- again...distractions. This longing for love and relationship was at war with the purity I felt like I had to uphold and I believed there was no way I could have both at the same time.

I lived in constant fear that my desires physically were bad and out of control and if I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, I would have sex outside of marriage which (I was taught) was bad and shameful. I couldn’t bear it.

This fear, this mindset, this way of thinking...shaped my life for a long time. My struggles with fantasy and masturbation had me locked in a jail cell called condemnation. Nobody could get out...nobody could get in...because nobody understood what I was really going through and I believed it was safer to stay inside of this jail cell called condemnation than it was to be FREE -- to be liberated.

THERAPY

Maybe a year and a half ago I was having one of those low moments where I was feeling a bit defeated sexually. I felt the heavyweight of sexual shame. Now, my sister has always thought therapy and taking care of your mental health was a good thing. A concept she picked up from her home church almost 8+ years ago. At the time, it was "progressive" to be talking about mental health in church.

The church we came from subconsciously taught me that you were crazy if you had to see a mental therapist or counselor. Probably because our pastor, before he started following Jesus, was in a mental institution and his testimony was always that the Bible and meditation of the Word of God is what delivered him out of his unhealthy mental state.

I didn't realize until I started to prepare for this message but that teaching formed in me the belief that if I needed mental help, it was because my relationship with God wasn't "strong enough". If I needed mental help it was because I wasn't a deep enough Christian or I didn't know enough Bible verses.

When my sister was talking about therapy and counseling I was like, “You're crazy...but okay, whatever floats your boat.” Years later my friend Delicia told me a similar thing. She kind of felt like, “I don't know if I can help you with what you're dealing with as I don't have the same story as you...I feel like therapy might really help you.”

Although I couldn't verbalize it at the time, but her encouragement to seek therapy and counseling was telling me that I wasn't a good Christian. My relationship with God wasn't strong enough and I needed...help.

It took me a few months to come to grips with that...and without telling a soul I started looking for a therapist off and on.

• I tried one counselor. Didn't quite work.

• I tried chat-only therapy. Wasn't really my thing.

• Tried my friend's therapist. She was booked.

• Googled therapists and wasn't really finding what I was looking for.

I took a break from searching and then the summer of 2020 hit me like a ton of bricks. Quarantine. Racial unrest. Isolation. Lack of church community -- all wrapped up into one like a gift I didn't want to open but was forced to.

That's when I picked up the search again and was determined to get help. I felt like I was going crazy and I couldn't deal with the racial trauma, the sexual trauma, and trying to navigate a new guy I started talking to that I liked...Kendall Dooley. He's here tonight. Finally, after many months of searching for the right fit, in July 2020 I had my first session with Dr. Chante who specializes in EMDR and it changed my life. Here’s a message from her explaining trauma and EMDR therapy:

LESSONS I’M LEARNING IN THERAPY…

Therapy has given me freedom in naming things.

Therapy doesn't just work because you go. It works because you work it.

I realized the ways in which I was formed and the experiences I've had and lived through, have, like clay, formed me to believe and behave in a certain way.

It formed me to believe that I couldn't trust myself. That if I start kissing my boyfriend...then I'm going to have sex outside of marriage and I can't deal with the shame so — “NO, absolutely not.”

Shame is rooted in fear. Fear that I am not loved or accepted because of who I am and what I've done.

But I forgot that the fruit of the spirit is self-control. So, I can trust myself because I trust the One who I’m submitted to. That I'm submitted to the Holy One and given my life to the rhythms and ways of Jesus.

#1. I can trust myself.

That I CAN indeed trust myself because I'm a new person and the Holy Spirit lives in me. I can trust that as I date Kendall we’ll be able to adhere and uphold the values we’ve agreed upon. I can trust that if I kiss him I’ll be able to stop.

In therapy, Dr. Chante asked me, “What’s the worst that can happen?”  Let’s say you do have sex out of wedlock...you get pregnant...you have a baby...what’s the worst that can happen?

I said...I’d probably lose my pastoral position…that I just started...so that’s a thing. I feel like I would be shamed by other people...and that people would look at me differently because that’s what I saw. When I was in high school, there was a young girl at our church that got pregnant out of wedlock and although it was never said out loud, I felt that she was shamed and looked down upon because she was pregnant. She didn’t adhere to “purity culture” and had “failed” the vow to remain “pure” until marriage.

I guess I was afraid of that happening to me as well.

Dr. Chante said to me, “Now why wouldn’t that become a part of your story and your testimony? Okay, so you had sex out of wedlock, got pregnant, and maybe had to resign as a pastor…why wouldn’t God then use that in a redemptive way to help other people?”

It was in that moment that I realized how much fear was running my life and decisions and not faith, grace, and love.

“I can trust myself,” is definitely not a one-size-fits all statement. It requires that each of us have a deep understanding of who we are, our lived experiences, the ways in which we were formed and what healthy relationship looks like based on that…and from there in communication with our partner and in community, you decide what you value and how you will live that out before each other and before God.

Kendall told me the other day that he doesn't really carry guilt/shame. I didn’t quite understand what he was saying. Then he paused and said, “I just really believe in God’s grace.” Wow. Kendall, my boyfriend, is heart set on being an effective witness for Jesus Christ, but if he makes mistakes along the way, he carries no guilt or shame about that.

I had an epiphany at that moment. That there really is…

#2. GRACE for the GREY.

• There’s grace for not having the answer.

• There’s grace for not having it figured out.

• There’s grace for still being in process.

#3. The best gift I can give to someone else is a healthy version of me.

When we are unhealthy and are operating from a place of fear, shame, insecurity, etc. we are teaching our family, friends, co-workers, community how to COPE with our toxicity. You're discipiling people into your toxicity. Like a potter that forms clay, we are forming people based on the things that have wounded us.

Think about it. When someone learns how to cope with someone else's anger, passive aggression, envy, fear...it forms something inside of them as well as the people that do life with them. It could show up as:

• Attachment wounds.

• Identity issues.

• Value/worth issues.

• Confidence issues.

• Trust issues.

• Communication issues.

The thing that builds what MLK calls a “beloved community” is healthy individuals that give love and share that health with those around them.

Let’s go back to the passage in John 8:1-11. It’s almost as if Jesus conducts a therapy session with the lady who was just caught in adultery:

• Jesus helps the woman caught in adultery...name the struggle

• Name her accusers

• Name her shame / condemnation

• Then He liberates her. He says, “where are your accusers?…Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

He frees her from shame, guilt and condemnation and then says, “With this new identity of love that I’ve given you...go and live in your new liberated state.” Jesus doesn’t condemn you. Jesus removes the fear that is the root of the shame placed upon you.

As you sit -- would you imagine the love in Jesus’ eyes that He has for you.

Imagine Him saying to you...I don’t condemn you either...go and sin no more.

There’s an invitation here I believe Jesus is extending to all of us. To be free from shame and the guilt placed upon us by others and the shame we place upon ourselves by internalizing the voices of others.

May we find healing and liberation in the holistic view of His creation. Even if that’s going to therapy and counseling. Even if that’s journaling, talking to someone, sending an email, writing a letter to start. Jesus, we accept this invitation...AMEN.

QUESTIONS FOR TABLE DISCUSSIONS:

1. Do you experience the feeling of shame more so from yourself or from other people?

2. When you feel shame, how does it show up in your body? How do you normally feel and where do you feel it in your body?

3. How did Jesus free the lady caught in adultery from shame? What did He do?

4. What is one thing you can do to become a healthier version of yourself emotionally/mentally?