Shame Shades

I post alot about shame because I have recently been freed of it and the things I learned about it are so valuable. Becoming free of shame is what caused me to have the courage to start a blog. The freedom I now feel has given me a confidence I’ve never known. The steps I took to get freed from shame are found here…What’s In Your Suitcase?

By no means does this mean that I don’t still feel that old shame creeping back up. There are still times that it tries to speak to me. How does shame speak to me? Well I’ll try to explain what I was taught on it, with an anology.

Imagine today is the day you are going to go outside and take some awesome pictures. But when you step outside, it’s dull, gray and cloudy. So much for beautiful pictures. Except now-a-days you can put a different lense on your camera, so that when you go out in the drab, dreary light, you can look through that lense and see blue skies and sunny, lit green trees. Put the camera down and it’s back to drab. It’s all in the lense. The lense is filtering what you see.

When you’re full of shame, it’s the same way. Not always. Not with everything. But most of the time it can happen.

Someone says to you, “I love your dress, where did you get it?” But you hear, “Since when did you get good enough to wear a dress like that?” Because inside you really do feel that way and cannot fathom how anyone could pay you a compliment. The filter of shame distorts what’s going in.

Another example: “I would love to spend more time with you. Let’s do lunch” this goes through your shame shades and ends up in your mind like this. “I feel sorry for you because you have no friends. I’ll be the only one who cares and go to lunch with you.” Are you seeing what I am getting at? I have done it for years.

It can also happen with what you see along with what you hear. A smile from someone can be just that a friendly smile, but your shame shades filter it as a smile of pity or a fake smile, because after all why would anyone smile at you?

If you can identify with this, let God free you of shame. Life without it is much better than with it.  Shame causes addiction, low self-esteem, negative self-talk, anger, depression, fear…the list goes on. And while these things can exist on their own due to other factors, shame is often the culprit.

1 Timothy 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

 

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