When I started this book, FREEDOM STARTS TODAY, I’ve wondered why the author had never addressed the topic of shame. It had been HUGE in my past and in my need for recovery. Well, today was the day for hitting this topic. I’m always drawn in like a magnet when this topic surfaces in a book I’m reading or in a conversation I’m engaging.

Shame takes root when the sins of our life begin to shape our identity. It overpowers any truth scripture would give us. For me, I believed all that scripture said for all others. However, I knew that what the scriptures said would only come true for me upon death. When I crossed over into heaven I would be all that scripture said. That was one of the reasons I lived to die. I so desperately wanted to be free of the shame within me.

When I was in therapy for the 3 years after the first year of our Celebrate Recovery start, the most powerful, intense session was the one addressing shame. There have been two times in my life when Jesus literally showed up. It was in this session on shame when God and Jesus came. At the end of each session I would be asked to put all that had surfaced in “the safe place” where it could never haunt me again. In this particular session I was so laden with the weight of the shame I couldn’t move any part of my body. I could barely whisper let alone lift this weight. When the counselor heard me whisper this, she asked me to seek help from God by His sending angels. In my mind I asked him but none came. I whispered to the counselor that no one had ever come to help. She told me to not believe this lie and to keep asking. It was then that two beings arrived–God and Jesus. How I knew who it was? I don’t have a clue other than I just knew. They lifted the weight of the shame from me! As I was leaving the session I was reminded to thank God and Jesus for coming and taking this weight from me.

As I was driving back to the school I was working with I remembered what the counselor had said, so I said out loud in my pickup, “Thank You God and Jesus for coming today. Why didn’t you send the angels?” I instantly heard in my spirit–“We came because we wanted you to know we cared.” I had to pull off the street, I was weeping.