Shame

There are a number of changes that occur in Mid-Life and some are better known that others. One of the lesser known is a man suddenly feeling the need to reconnect with the kind of relationship he had with God when he was younger. It often starts with a vague uneasiness and leads to questioning about his purpose for being here. He begins a journey to find out more about this and generally uses the wrong approach. I would like to use the analogy of a house to illustrate his misguided efforts.

He goes home one day and throws out all of his old furniture, rips up the old carpet and cleans from top to bottom. He paints, adds new floor coverings and furniture. He puts new siding on the house, new roofing shingles, new windows and finishes off with a brand new front door. The he takes a big breath and stands back to admire all of his efforts and then throwing open the door says, OK God, I’m ready, come on in. And then he waits. Days, weeks, months and finally years pass but nothing happens.

One day while standing at the door his eyes wander across the room to the door leading to the basement and he finds himself drawn by some mysterious force to the door. He opens the door and closing it behind him, he finds himself standing on the landing in the dark. While standing there he comes face to face with his anger. He recalls the many times when things didn’t go his way and he just pushed the anger in and suddenly all of the pent up anger was sucked into the darkness and he felt a sense of relief.

He makes his way down the steps to the basement floor and there in the pitch black he sees his hidden fears and these too are pulled into the darkness.

Next he inches his way across the room to the coalbin and closing the door behind him he stands quietly in the dark and looks into the abyss of his hurts. All of the times that someone said or did something that hurt him but he never said anything. These too eased their way out of his inner soul into the dark room and he felt a tremendous sense of peace.

Then he sees an opening in the floor in the corner and getting down on hands and knees he crawls in and soon he is crawling on his belly down there with the slimy creatures of the dark and looking ahead he sees a rock and written the moss on the rock is the word, shame. He knows that when he turns over the rock he will have to face the shame that is hidden in the deepest recesses of his soul. He turns over the rock and suddenly he is upstairs standing in the front door with the bright sunlight shinning throughout the house.

It is then that he comes to understand that God does not come in through the front door of your ego but rather through the back door of your shame. When you expose your shame to the sunlight, you open the door for God