Embodied: a letter from K.J. Ramsey
Dear Friend,
I'd venture to say there's a good chance the pain of 2019 is probably pushing you to make 2020 different. Maybe this final day of 2019 has you choosing a New Years resolution or two. I'm spending time this week reflecting on what God is inviting me into for 2020 too. But, I also know in about a week, about half or more of you are probably going to feel a pang of shame for already breaking your resolutions. By February 80% of those resolutions will be regrets. Many of us will begin 2020 in the shadow of shame, haunted by the ghosts of the weight we didn't lose, the follow-through we didn't have, and the dreams that remain deferred.
Shame haunts our hope, but recognizing its presence—and lemme tell you, it's present—is the first step in living in the hope that we are actually loved. I've been wanting to share This Too Shall Last with you with you for ages, and I've decided that you deserve sneak peeks before everyone else sees it when it's finally out in May. So, today, in one big FU to shame and one big yes to your good new year, I'm sharing a little from Chapter 2, "Warring Storylines: Hijacked by Shame, Healed by Solidarity." Shame wants you to think you have one shot at getting 2020 right, but the gentle hand of grace is always outstretched, inviting you to remember you are loved every single day.
From Hiding to Honest
The roaring rainstorm sweeping northern Wyoming seized my attention as we drove to our temporary landing place of Bozeman, Montana. Gripping the wheel and staring hard through the curtain of rain coming across the windshield, I slowly adjusted to the storm we were in. By the time I saw an incoming call from a dear friend, I was calm enough to answer. Lore had faced sorrows like our own, sorrows like the one that had us jobless, homeless, and driving up I-25 with all our earthly possessions in a five-by-eight U-Haul trailer in search of solace and a future. As the torrent receded into a drizzle, I trickled out the story of our most recent suffering, primly summarizing in the plainest terms how more hard things had happened.
“You need to let your pain matter,” she responded. “Don’t rush to make everything sound more okay than it is.”
I’d spoken these same words to dozens of my therapy clients, but hearing them was like rain in a drought. Hydration hurts a little when you’re cracked and trying to keep yourself from crumbling. Her voice and presence were a tender dressing on a wound that had just started healing, the kind of dressing you can’t change on your own.
My mouth had said there were blessings in disguise, but my body was tense with the truth of its discouragement. I was tired of sharing stories of suffering. I was ashamed of having one more hard thing happen, afraid my friends would eventually blame me for all the suffering in my life. So I simplified, minimizing our present pain into a pittance of what it actually was. Lore heard past my words, reminding me that patient honesty is better than shamed silence or withheld woes.
(a photo from right after that rainstorm)
I want to live in the equidistant place between truth and sorrow, the place where pain dwells companionably with mystery. And sometimes that means refusing to plaster an overlay of tidy goodness on my experiences. It means letting someone hear I’m crumbling, weak, and weary. Sometimes hope comes through sight, in showing the truth our bodies are telling about our stories instead of placing pretty words of purpose over our pain.*|TWITTER:TWEET [$text="Sometimes hope comes through sight, in showing the truth our bodies are telling about our stories instead of placing pretty words of purpose over our pain." @kjramseywrites #ThisTooShallLast]|* Sometimes the most faithful response to suffering is letting ourselves show our honest sadness. *|TWITTER:TWEET [$text="Sometimes the most faithful response to suffering is letting ourselves show our honest sadness." @kjramseywrites #ThisTooShallLast]|*
After I hung up the phone, I wondered if this is the surprising way of Jesus, the man who so fully honored our pain that he took it into his very body and carried it to the cross. I wondered if his is a story we can’t fully remember on our own, if it takes phone calls and gentle prodding to be honest and be seen to spot through the rushing storms of today that our stories are still part of his.
I wondered if finding grace when suffering lingers requires moving from hiding to honest, from naked to clothed, from withholding and ashamed in our singular stories of suffering to being held in a shared story of God’s solidarity with our pain.
...
Deep down, our greatest fear is that if we express how broken and scared we really feel, we will sink into complete darkness. We fear that expressing the depth of our discouragement will separate us from God.
Shame is the stealthy, compelling energy evil is constantly using to distract us from living in the story where grace is here. *|TWITTER:TWEET [$text="Shame is the stealthy, compelling energy evil is constantly using to distract us from living in the story where grace is here." @kjramseywrites #ThisTooShallLast]|*
Before we even have words to acknowledge or ascribe meaning to its disturbing presence, shame is felt in our bodies in the dynamic interplay of relationship…Before we consciously register we’ve noticed, our bodies are responding to the nonverbal cues of others. Shame starts with the sigh of someone who is tired of listening to us, an irritated glance, or lack of eye contact in a conversation. The dam of shame has often been released before we realize it, starting from the lower regions of our brains.
Shame quickly and powerfully disrupts the integration of the lower and upper regions of our brains, biologically isolating parts of ourselves from one another. We become overwhelmed by the current of energy in our brain stems and temporarily unable to access the regulating, rational functions of the upper region of our brains, the prefrontal cortex. Without thinking, we turn our gaze away from others to deal with the rush of painful emotion, but turning away only reinforces the sense that we are alone and that we have to deal with this, and everything, on our own.
Shame hijacks us, persuading us, often without our awareness, to live according to our culture’s story of self-sufficient hiding and pretending. It is the emotional sense “that I do not have what it takes to tolerate this moment or circumstance.” (Thompson, The Soul of Shame, 25) As such, shame wordlessly tells our bodies the story that we are abandoned, unlovable, and headed for harm. It convinces us to disconnect, self-protect, and detach from where we are and who we are.
When everything around us treats weakness like a personal problem to master, when we suffer and it does not cease, shame becomes more palpable. When your disease isn’t healed, your marriage doesn’t last, or your mental health is lacking, you have to both experience weakness and cope with it in a world that tells you it is your fault.
We silence ourselves in shame, withholding truth about suffering, because of the unspoken, preemptive verdict that grace won’t be here. Shame wants us to live divided, dishonest, disembodied lives, to treat our bodies and stories like failures to conceal, to let our lips say we believe God is good while our hearts stay discouraged in the dark. The most harrowing power of shame might be its stealth in convincing us that silencing our pain behind statements of God’s goodness is spiritual, when really it’s just a churchy form of self-sufficiency.
Finding grace in suffering is less about cognitively assenting to the truth of God’s goodness than about letting our shame be seen. *|TWITTER:TWEET [$text="Finding grace in suffering is less about cognitively assenting to the truth of God's goodness than about letting our shame be seen." @kjramseywrites #ThisTooShallLast]|*
It is only in honesty and exposure, in being seen in our sadness and despair, that we’ll most clearly see the truth that we’re still living in a story of love.
It’s the shared sight and sound of what we usually keep hidden that carries our bodies into stories larger than shame.
Goodness
+ To Hear: I loved sharing with Charlotte Donlon on the Hope for the Lonely podcast this month. Listen here.
+ To Read: I wrote the hardest article of my life thus far, for Christianity Today a few days ago. There's No Shame When a Miracle Doesn't Come: God Didn't #WakeUpOlive, But the Gospel Shows Christ's Solidarity with Our Suffering
+ To See: You guys, my book's in its layout now, and it's so beautiful I have to show you. (That's a tear stream in the chapter title. 😭) I'm busy making red marks in the margins before this baby goes to the printer for Advanced Reader Copies.
Thank you for sharing a little email space with me to find grace and joy in your ordinary life. As you head into 2020, please remember, grace steadily reaches toward you with an outstretched hand, unafraid and unfazed by your shame. Reach back, as you are, where you are.
In the courage of Christ,
KJ