Entry One: Failure + Pride = Shame
I separated from my ex-wife in Feb 2023. No one really knew that I had reached the absolute end of my rope 11 months prior – but that I’d decided, as I always had in that marriage, to hold on.
I made the decision silently, privately – wanting to be respectful as a leader in church. I never aired it publicly. I didn’t confide in the people I pastored, nor did I share the details of what happened. But silence has a cost. Where I withheld the story, others filled it in inaccurately. They created their own narrative, and I became misunderstood. Mistrusted. Misrepresented. Even so, I hold fast to my values. What happened and how things were in that 10-year marriage is personal, and I choose to keep things that way.
Through the past 3 years, I’ve battled that, along with other experiences of neglect and misunderstanding through my life and ministry. I wasn’t sure if I’d be disqualified from ministry after ending the marriage, but I knew I had to step down for a time. At the same time, I knew that if I had stayed in the marriage, I would never have the capacity to fulfill my purpose in my ministry and life.
It was a hard decision, long thought out through years of toil and repetition.
Shame started to set in. I felt like what some would call a “fallen pastor”. The friends that stayed kept me safe and supported me 100%. In this time, I learned who I could trust. I kept going, moving forward, carrying the shame and guilt day in and day out. I didn’t speak up, I didn’t correct the narrative. I just kept moving, dragging guilt and regret behind me like old luggage. I justify myself for why I had to do what I did, and get stuck in a loop.
It resulted in so much anger, and in me drawing strength from my anger. Although my anger was based on truth, it became toxic to me. I developed borderline personality disorder, and whenever I had a borderline split (episode) I started hurting myself and the people around me.
Buddha once said, “Hate is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” I’m a Christian, but I know wisdom when I hear it. That’s what I was doing – poisoning myself. Drowning in shame, justifying my reactions with hurt, and slowly losing my identity to anger and a new need for control
The shame had totally engulfed me, and I became so powerful in my anger. I created an island of people that would stick with me no matter what. This unraveled when one day one of them disappeared without a word, forever. They had discovered what I’d been doing in secret. I had come from a place that pursued truth, goodness, and morality, but that changed in these 3 years when I became angry. I justified my actions and my promiscuity by saying that since no one can be trusted, I’d do what makes me feel safe. I told myself, “After all I’ve been through, I deserve this.” I learned the hard way that this is one of the most dangerous things you can believe.
The failure that others perceived – whether true or not – and my pride had wrapped themselves into toxic shame. And shame, if not surrendered, always corrupts.
What can we do to prevent shame? What can we do to overcome it, so that it doesn’t get the better of us?
Unless we never fail or we are completely in denial, the answer lies in who we choose to turn to and what we choose to do with it.
After a life of humiliation, a lady in Luke 8:43-48 sought anonymity instead of asking Jesus to heal her from the bleeding she had experienced for 12 years. She snuck up behind Him and touched his cloak. Jesus felt power leave Him and she was instantly healed. It is difficult to blame this woman who faced public humiliation for 12 years; for hiding and giving shame so much power. Are we any better? I know that I am not.
I guess the first step, as displayed by this woman, is to turn to Him in whatever capacity we can muster. And second, also displayed by her, is to receive full healing and wholeness from the Maker with faith.
A senior pastor led me through a breathing exercise recently where I breathed in Jesus’ life from my diaphragm and exhaled whatever toxic shame and negative emotion I felt. He asked me to go back – to sit in a significant memory of shame, and to ask, "Jesus, where are You?" What I saw in that moment was Jesus in the near distance, ever so casually beckoning me forward. He wasn’t ignoring my pain. But He was also not recognizing the shame others put on me. He was just calling me forward.
Who can truly condemn you, if He does not?
