Shame

Everything is negative. Every road I go down. I can't shake it. My brain is bent toward the negative, inescapably going down that sad and sorry route. Foolish. Foolhardy. What a waste. Why can't I turn it aside?

In the last few days I have recognized the ugly head of my pride asserting itself. In each difficulty I see an insult, an exposure of my weakness, a rebuke for my poor behavior. I should know better, and then the anger and the humiliation and the shame. The spiral is messing with my mind. So I stop thinking, it's the only way I can escape.

This afternoon I went over to the College and fell into a long conversation with one of the students. He reminded me of a truth: life is about the journey, not the destination. I remember when I first grasped this truth three or four years ago when I drew a time line of my life. When I saw the visual representation of my lifespan, I was able to take a deep breath and accept that a few more years of study and preparation were small part in the whole count of my life.

Today the journey analogy had a different application. When I said it can be hard not to live life looking forward, my conversation partner said - or looking back, being ashamed. That caught me. That is just what I have been doing over the last week. Looking back. Regretting things not done. Feeling foolish over things done or said. Wishing I had exercised better self discipline, been a little less obvious, been a little more proactive.

Perhaps it is time to remember an old favorite truth of mine: what's done can't be undone. Cut your losses. Cut line and move on. I read a quote recently to the effect that a leader must be willing to be embarrassed in front of others. I thought I had been working on this. I thought I was doing better. I thought I was willing, but I have discovered that there was one person I did not want to look foolish in front of, and that has set off a chain reaction leading to where I am now.

In the summer of 2005, I vividly recall an object lesson I was given in receiving grace. It was timely and a bit painful, but good. That experience brought home to me, with clarity, just how imperfect I was, and how it wasn't just God's forgiveness I might stand in need of. Accepting the forgiveness and grace of others for my wrong doing or foolishness means making myself vulnerable, admitting I am imperfect and need that grace. Being hurt and willing to heal.

I don't like being in that place. In many ways I feel I have been there for the better part of the last six months, and my baser nature is beginning to rebel, to assert itself, to declaim "enough already! Isn't this ever going to stop?" Just one day, one week, without wondering where the money is coming, without fearing the death of a dream, without bearing a broken heart, without dealing with rejection, without wanting to cry, to give up, without thinking longingly of the days I dwelt with despair as with a friend. Life was easier then, says the liar, you may have been miserable, but at least there was no disappointment, no searing pain, no lost dreams.

Yes, O voice of woe, no disappointment because there was no expectation, no pain because there was no joy, no lost dreams because there were no dreams at all. Life then was simply darkness, longing for death, clinging to faith for inscrutable reasons. I can see this with the un-impassioned part of my being. I can still be impartial. I can still think clearly on some level, but somehow I cannot escape the morass, get above the regrets, leave behind the shame.

Just do it. But I can't do it. There is one who can.