The God Who Sees

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

There are forces inside us and there are forces outside us that often come against the deepening of our relationship with God and keep us from taking hold of the joy that is meant to be ours in knowing Him. These forces often collude to sabotage our healing and communion with God.

When I was a teenager, I was gripped by shame, and shame will cause us to hide, to retreat, to try to shrink ourselves and make ourselves unnoticeable.

Shame may feel similar to guilt, but guilt motivates us to seek repair and rebuild relationships both with God and with others. Shame doesn’t move us toward others. Shame pushes everyone, including God, away as we pull back ourselves. So let’s talk about it.

Shame is born from a painful experience and the trauma it caused, making its home in our bodies as well as in our minds. From a teenage breakout to trauma caused by horrific abuse, from being shamed by others for any reason at all to shaming ourselves for a real or perceived failure, shame triggers our fight, flight, or freeze reaction in our parasympathetic nervous system. That reaction causes us to withdraw. Shame causes us to hide by igniting the instinct to protect ourselves from further judgment and rejection.

Can you see how this might keep you from moving closer to Jesus if it is still embedded deep within you? Brené Brown defines shame this way: “[Shame is] the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”

We need belonging in order to survive. We need love even more deeply. Without it, or faced with the fear of losing it, we become desperate. If we believe at our core that we are unworthy of love because of an internal flaw, we will pull back out of shame. We will try to make ourselves smaller. It can become difficult to leave the house. Social gatherings can be a painful trial. Even showing up can be hard. We feel shame in our bodies, perhaps through a tight stomach or a blushing face. We lower our eyes. Our shoulders cave. Anxiety too is often rooted in shame, and we certainly experience that in our bodies.

In The Soul of Shame, Curt Thompson writes, “Another feature of shame’s presentation is that of hiding. Whether it is the involution into the silence of our own minds or the literal turning away from someone with a downcast facial expression with eyes lowered, shame leads us to cloak ourselves with invisibility.” It doesn’t work.

We spiral down. Our fear of being seen keeps us acting in ways to prevent us from being seen, when being seen is exactly what we need in order to heal. Shame is a bear trap that grabs hold and refuses to let go without intervention. Intervention is available.

Because we have a God who sees. El Roi not only sees you clearly, but He approves of you and applauds for you. We cannot hide from Him, nor do we need to.

Ever.

Want more? Order your copy of The Ladder of Love today