Shame [Part Two]

I met him and he struck me as perfectly ordinary (er, if you count vegan punk rockers as ordinary).  We sat together watching illegal 4th of July fireworks somewhere out where East Texas pine trees grow, and his arm went around my shoulders and stayed there.  That night we slept next to eachother.  A few nights later, closer than that. 

He was a nobody.  Just a guy.  Nothing attractive—actually, the opposite.  Other than looking cool, there was nothing about him that I was attracted to.  He had no job, dropped out of high school, crashed in other people’s apartments, used other people’s drugs, and had no aspirations of change. 

But I wanted him with me.  So he moved in.  I paid the bills, I bought the food, I filled up the gas tank.  I don’t know what he did all day when I was at work, but all that mattered was that he was there when I got back.  He filled up that empty space.  The guy downstairs could never get me again, because I had somebody.  Nobody could hurt me, because I was in charge now, and I was hurting myself.  (At least then I could control who was causing the pain).  

I started doing drugs again, and this time, there was no limit.  Before, I’d been careful.  Like my typical nerdy self (and not wanting to do any permanent damage to myself), I went to the library and checked out books on LSD before dropping my first hit.  I was cautious before, drugs being a recreation.  But now, I just did whatever was set in front of me.  It was more than recreation—it was necessary.   

The house down the street was on a whippets kick (nitrous oxide–via whipped cream cartidges) and I joined them.  I remember driving there drunk on my mountain bike one night, trying to figure out which of the three driveways dancing in front of me was the real one.  I guessed wrong, and crashed.  Stumbling in to the house holding my aching leg, I joined the circle, sucking down the gas from the balloon, laying back and feeling the helicopter-like whirring in my head soak down into my feet, all of life slowing down, all of it floating away with the helicopters.  I knew it was the sound of brain cells dying, but I didn’t care anymore.  They could all die.  What mattered now was not feeling anything. 

To be perfectly honest, I really don’t remember much of that period.  I was numb.  I didn’t care.  I did stupid things that I have hazy recollections of.  I remember thinking that if I didn’t find a way to crawl out of that hole, I would die there.  And Jesus was there, somewhere, but Shame felt closer.   Shame promised me his allegience—Shame would be there when I woke up in the morning and couldn’t remember how I got home.  Jesus was somewhere off to the side, or maybe He had finally left in disgust.  He was ashamed of me and He didn’t want me.  I was dirty.  I was unclean and there was no getting clean with dirt like mine.  You have to have a white dress to marry Him, and mine was anything but that.  I’d had my chance and I missed it.  Only one new beginning per lifetime, and mine was already used up. 

There is a good kind of shame.  It’s a shame that is born of knowing you were wrong, but when it hits you, it comes with a warm rain that washes you clean and offers a firm hand that helps you raise back to your feet.  It’s a shame that comes seconds before repentance and forgiveness and it’s the mark of a tender conscience, a gift given by the Holy Spirit that makes us able to be convicted.  Feeling that kind of shame is right and good and holy—and, most importantly, momentary, because when you feel it and grapple with it, you instantly take the next step and then the rain is pouring down and you are crying (thankful, joyful) and clean and walking again.

Then there is another kind of Shame.  This kind lives with you.  It isn’t the beginning of a good thing, it just is.  There is no rain to wash it away because it’s not that kind, it’s not leading you out, but leading you deeper in.  It feeds on you and feeds on itself and grows and it pets you as you wallow in it, as you lose yourself in it. 

A healthy person would sense that this Shame is something to run from, but what if something inside of you is broken?  What if, instead of alarm bells, your reaction is one of pleasure?  What if that sense of Shame makes you feel safe, protected?  Like you will be whole as long as Shame is there with you, that if it’s not there then something terrible will happen?  What if letting go of Shame’s hand makes you feel lost, like something isn’t right?  What if you think that Shame isn’t something extra, but is part of who you are?

In that way, I feel like I’ve been two people.  There is one side of me that knows Shame is out to bleed me dry.  I hate him.  I hate everything about him, and I want to see him go down.  I hate what he’s done to me and I hate what he’s done to others.  He talks big but he runs like a cockroach when the lights come on.  I can look back over periods of my life when I let him call the shots and see nothing but wasted desert spaces.   He comes back from time to time and that part of me isn’t afraid of him, isn’t fooled by him.  That part of me narrows her eyes and spits in his face and slams the door and gets on with her life. 

But then there is the other side—the side that hears Shame’s whisper and quivers with anticipation.  He makes that part of me feel ”right.”  And I think, “What could be the harm of visiting with an old friend?  Just one conversation over coffee—just one slow dance to music I’ve almost forgotten.”  Sometimes I forget that he comes with his roses and winsome words, but by the time he’s gone, I’m broken and bleeding and hiding in terror.  But, and this is the frustrating part of it, when he knocks again, when my legs have been reset and I am once again walking, that part of me will still want to let him in.  Again. 

Even if I don’t—even if I stay where I am and put my hands over my ears and sing as loud as I can to drown out his pleading voice, I will still want him.  Even after he goes away, even after I breath a huge sigh of relief, there is still that part inside of me that will be disappointed, that wanted to see him just one more time, that figures it’s worth the pain just to feel “right.”

Maybe there will come a day when that part isn’t there anymore.  But sometimes I wonder.  Perhaps there will always be parts of us that are broken this side of heaven, perhaps there will always be parts that crave things that will hurt us, and perhaps the point is not to wish they’d just shut up, but simply to learn how to walk on higher ground. 

There is this thing called Walking in the Spirit that saves me from Shame.  My own self betrays me, but the Spirit does not.  Walking in the Spirit, says Paul in Galatians, is the exact opposite of walking in the flesh, and it’s true—Shame is about me.  When I boil all the water away and look in the bottom of the pot, I see self-indulgance there.  Shame casts my eyes on me—it becomes all about me, and even when I am paralyzed and terrified, it’s because it’s all about me.  And when being shamed makes me feel “right,” again, it’s still because it’s all about me.  

It’s a definition I adopted about myself before I can ever remember, this idea that Shame is a part of my core—but that it “feels” right, even “spiritual,”  doesn’t prove anything.  Shame tells me truth, which is why he’s so good at what he does, but he leaves out parts of it.  He tells me all about me, a me that is all alone.  And of course, he’s right about me, if it’s true that I’m all alone, that is, and that’s why I bought his story.  The only things he says about God is that He’s good, that He is holy, and that He is far away, that He is disgusted, that He could never bear to see me, that He is sadly disappointed.  Shame steals hope.  It’s what he specializes in. 

But even though I believed Him, even though I thought Jesus was far away, that new beginnings were allotted only once, I learned that there was more to the story than what Shame presented.  In so many ways, I felt like the Prodigal Son, except that I didn’t know my Father.  So I stayed in the pigpen, starving to death, feeling “right” about my place in the world, feeling like justice had been served. 

But one day, I remembered the story Jesus had told them.   The actual story.  And that particular day, the pigs got a real surprise.  I’m not sure if they’d even noticed the pile of bones covered with filth, half-breathing in the corner, but one morning, that morning, she sat up straight and opened her eyes.  Like the text says, that day her, “mind returned unto her,” and all of a sudden she remembered that there was a Father in the story.  It didn’t end in the pigpen.  There was a road that kept going, past the sty, through the villages and countryside and back to the Father’s house.  There was a Father waiting at the end of the road, scanning the horizon, losing serious social status (in his culture) by standing out there looking for his selfish traitor child, but standing anyway, hoping, waiting, watching. 

So that day, I got back up.  I turned on (the figurative) lights that had been off for half of a year.  It was as if color came back into the world, as if disjointed continents came back together.  I said goodbye to the sty, even though it made me feel right, even though I deserved it, and I started the long walk that made no sense but for the Father at the end of it.