Naked and Unashamed

Can I be really honest?

The past few weeks have been pretty hard for me, because my world has felt very out of control. I have seen my own insufficiency in stark reality. I have often felt like I've failed. Fear has been rampant. I have often felt like a disappointment. And my identity has also felt very foreign, as if I am trying to put on a wool sweater, only to find that it has shrunk in the dryer and, like the Grinch's grouchy heart, is now two sizes too small. Five gazillion transitions in a span of 3 months will do that to you occasionally.

"Me" doesn't seem to fit. It's easier to try and "fit in," than to be fully "me." But that too feels uncomfortable, because at the end of the day, I'm only good at being me. Trying to be someone else or something else other than myself feels like wearing a swimsuit in place of panties... which inevitably always ends up wedging itself in very uncomfortable places. Not a good fit either. So, I find myself caught in the middle.

And, I'm realizing more and more, that some of this disconnect (although certainly not all) comes from a very deep inner sense of unhealthy and non-Godly shame. See, "guilt" says, "I've done something wrong," but shame is much more insidious. "Shame" says, "there's something innately wrong with me," "I have failed, I have let people down, I have not lived up to their expectations, they must see me as a failure, I am not enough."

And whenever I relocate to a new place, new culture, new city and feel the disconnect of transition and change, trying to figure out exactly how things fit together, my own shame and sense of deep inadequacy rises the surface. In the awkwardness of trying to find my place in a new environment, I immediately question my "right" to be in that place. And the volume of the lies in my head gets amped up a bit. "Worthless." "Failure." "Without form, without identity, without distinction." "Who are you, anyhow?"

Satan's favorite attack on me is one of shame: "You are a worthless failure and unable to please God. You dishonor his name." And it is highly successful far too often: it is crippling when I buy into that lie.

But friends, here's the truth: Satan's attack is so highly successful because it is built on a basis of partial truth. I am unable to please God. I am inept at what I do. I will fail inevitably. But Satan's attack is thwarted by a simple recognition of the Gospel. Here's the good news for me today...

I have value not because of anything I do or am, but because God has conferred value to me by making me, as a unique daughter, His. I am worthy not because of what I do or am, but because God has made me worthy through Jesus. I cannot, but the Holy Spirit can, and He merely asks that I request his presence and power. My failure does not change my worth because at the end of the day, it's not about me. And friends, that is GOOD NEWS.

2 Corinthians 12:9 "My grace is sufficient for you, because my power is made perfect through weakness."

So friends, here I stand, "naked and unashamed" allowing my "messiness" to hang out, because at the end of the day, shame has no place in the already-but-not-yet kingdom of God. And I need those words of truth to speak louder than the lies that I all too often believe.