I decided to leave the Shame thread behind, a significant symbolic action.
I am moving on, nearing the half-way mark. While the residuals of the shaming still abide and that positive, hopeful state is still fragile, I have reached a point where I can call myself out of the darkness and sit perched on the fence of hope. When that physiological response to shame overtakes me, I can call on my positive beliefs, on the strength of God to move me out of that familiar but loathed state and into the new place of hope and comfort and great expectation. I have learned how to feed this new position.
In the past fear and doubt have won over and kept me bound in a prison of shame. With each move towards healing, fear and doubt would was in to stamp out every spark of hope; Fear that the healing would not be real, doubt that the relief I felt would last. It was hard indeed to get to this place but I do know that fear and doubt kept me stuck. For many years I have known the way out but could not believe it well enough. Too much else pulled me back, telling me that I did not deserve better or more than I had.
Even now as I sit in a fragile state, I am aware of a calling that is pulling me toward wholeness. It is a steady, low voice calling me toward healing. Until now that voice has been overshadowed by a loud, boisterous cacophony of wretched noise from disorder, shame and resentment.
I still have a distance to go but i can see the destination on the horizon and I am drawn to that place. Nothing can stand in my way. I will get there and it will be a brand new life.
I have lived so afraid of failure so ashamed of who I am and what my life has become. But today, I stand where I am and expect wonderful things to happen. I expect God to move in amazing ways in my life in the morning, at my home, on my way to school and during the rest of the day. I am looking for that and that occupies my mind and overwrites that passive place of that low grade buzz of shame, anxiety and dread.
