A many messaged chapter

Genesis 3, The Fall, studied by all the greats, written about, commented on, explored over and over. There's frankly books and books worth of teachings based in the one chapter. I also know that God in his wisdom leads each of us to the teachings related to particular scriptures that support our personal needs, pains, weaknesses and strengths. For me when I remember the fall I focus most often on Eve questioning God's goodness. She doubts him. I know so many of my actions, thoughts and emotions reflect that I doubt how good he is and how much he loves.

Reading it again and wondering about shame I think about Eve. Satan almost taunts her: "You aren't good or lovely, you could be more, you could know what he knows, you could have what he has." Maybe she felt ashamed. Did she feel small and not enough and flawed? A lot of writers say she was prideful and her sin was pride in grasping after being the same as God. And I don't dispute that. But was pride the secondary emotion? Was her pride a radical reaction to first feeling shame? My thoughts wander over how I would feel if someone pointed to something lovely and told me, "If you have that over there, you will be a better person". I don't immediately feel a sense of deserving that thing. My first thoughts are: "Yeah what I am is not enough. I could be better. I could/should be more than what I am." And yes it's pride to say God didn't make me right. As if I know better than God the way I should be. Or have we distorted our definition of pride because we're so desperate to avoid a conversation about shame?

The first definition I see listed of pride is: satisfaction with self: the happy satisfied feeling somebody experiences when having or achieving something special that other people admire. Only in the third definition is there mention of superiority and a haughty attitude.

I mean really when I was shopping on line last night was I feeling pride? "I deserve new things. I am worthy of the nicest items" NO what's really floating under there is: "Maybe I'll belong more if I look a certain way," or "Maybe that would minimize my waist" All the thoughts having the common thread of being not enough or too much. And I really don't think I'm avoiding my own pride by considering this line of emotion for Eve. I mean I have pride at times, for sure, no doubt about it. But now I wonder is the root of the pride my own struggle with shame? A feeling I had not even considered until a few weeks ago. Is this what is tripping me up and holding me back?

Little Details

There is simply so much there...the options for study and thought are endless. My mind is full of a zillion possible paths for discovery today. I've read the first chapters of Genesis more times than I could count. But I missed it. I'm not sure I have ever read those chapters looking for the emotions. And there it is...shame. As I was getting ready this morning thinking more about shame I asked God about where the scriptures talk about it and he began filling my mind with times when the disciples avoid obedience because they feel too small, or not enough. And then my mind flashed to the beginning Adam and Eve.

In looking at several versions of the first chapters a few things started to jump out and my fingers were flying to start making notes of the questions and thoughts buzzing through my mind. In skimming through the NIV, NLT, NKJ, NAS the first actually named feeling word is "ashamed". Feelings are alluded to prior to that but almost all the words are reporting facts and actions and events. Genesis 2:25 is the first clear statement about the emotions occurring in Adam and Eve. What's strange about this first emotion statement is that it's used as a contrast. The emotion of shame is NOT being experienced is what verse 25 says. God is describing the emotions that Adam and Eve are experiencing by saying they do not feel shame. In a literary way it's using the opposite of what they feel as a way of helping the reader understand what they do feel. But since I hardly understand what shame is, since we as a culture have ignored this emotion, in an attempt to deal with it, the contrast is lost on me. Whereas if it said, "They felt no sadness." I think oh yeah, I get it, I know how that feels. But shame being so foreign to me I really don't get it. So I've missed it, despite having read it many times, I avoided what I don't understand.

What is not ashamed? Do they feel whole, peaceful, connected and complete? Brene Brown formulates the definition of shame as:

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging. (I Thought It Was Just Me)

Perhaps they felt accepting of themselves, of each other and like they belonged both within their relationships and environment. They maybe felt a connection to God to each other and a peace with their humanity. And we know that at this moment in the scripture things are as God intended. Emotions, relationships, communication, sin has not yet destroyed the beautiful balance. This is a state that God must want for me.

Horrible Memories

I've been paying attention to shame these last few weeks. What I've discovered is one of the ways shame crushes my heart is by washing over me some very vivid and painful memories. At the most unsuspecting moments I am reliving times when I have said something I wish I had not. They are all memories of saying something that shocked, or made others feel insignificant, or odd. I mean I don't know exactly what the receiver of my words felt. I just know that their discomfort was obvious and I felt ashamed. I felt that I was bad. Some how being unable in that moment to separate saying something inappropriate from being something inappropriate. Now, often years later I still cannot separate it and the intensity of the emotion remains. I relive feeling as if I am too much or not enough.

Just last week I was out for a walk, getting some exercise and a memory flies into my brain and within seconds my heart is cringing, my head is hanging down and I am reliving the moment and feeling so small. I want these memories gone because they torment me. I would prefer to remember with such vivid clarity moments of joy in my life. But we cannot selectively numb emotion. If I want the joy memories then I will also have to have the uncomfortable ones, the moments that I felt shame. I wonder, as I take the first steps on this new aspect of my heart journey, how the emotions around these memories could shift, how it might feel in a year of working specifically around this issue. I am hopeful that some part of this will change. There will be good fruit.

We have to talk about Shame

I'm a counselor. I've been doing my own "work", that is growing my heart, stretching myself, trying to clean up and clear out this messy space inside me since I was eight and yet...I don't understand this word or the concept. Sure, I've said to staff and co-workers that it's important not to shame kids. I've used the word. I've said I felt ashamed but I have never ever dug into this...this thing. And in the hopes of healing dynamics within my work team I'm pointed toward Brene Brown's work and I cannot get my mind or heart away from the ideas. I know intuitively in my gut that I must do this work. I must find out what shame means, how it works in my life and when it is haunting me. I feel compelled by God to ponder, to wonder, to observe, to learn about how shame is crippling me. Because I believe it is. I am certain that shame is the biggest hindrance I face in living as God wants, in relating to others as I want to, to overcoming the depression and anxiety that has been ever present.

And in twelve years working in this field and in four years studying in counseling. No one has ever brought up shame. We have theories on self-esteem, and self-worth and addiction and grief but have we just been looking at symptoms all this time? Are all these curriculum's on anger management and bullying and overcoming yada, yada, yada really just treating the symptoms? We know now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, after fifteen years of unprecedented brain research that we are made for relationship. (Too bad we could not take the Bible at it's word many centuries ago.) It cannot be denied, although it is still yet to be very common knowledge. (Oh but it could have been, if we only believed what he wrote to us.) Those of us who study and work with people for a living are shouting that it's all about relationship. But maybe the more important truth is we cannot get there, relationship, unless we talk about shame. We must unmask it, remove the secrecy, dare to wade through it and even more importantly support one another in courageously taking on this monster every day.

I must talk about shame. It is the reason that though God told me years ago to blog, to do it regularly, to write not just for Him to see but for others to see, that I have done so little. I have feared that I am not enough or too much and have allowed those thoughts to be bigger than my courage and stronger than my voice.