The Weight of All My Shame

When I was preparing to start my new podcast, “Journeying With the Saints,” where I spent one year going through St. Faustina’s Diary, I came across this quote from her at the very start of her notebook recordings.

“It is no longer in my power to change, correct or add to the past; For neither the sages nor prophets could do that. And so, what the past has embraced, I must entrust to God.”

There was a time in my life where I was obsessed–OBSESSED–with finding a way to alter my past. I fantasized about it; daydreamed up a whole new fictional life for myself. At the end of the day, I was always faced with the grim reality that I could not change the past and I hated that fact.

I’m one of those people who harken back to the past quite a bit, for good and bad reasons. Part of me loves to reminisce and share memories. I will often ask my husband to tell me one of his favorite memories of us when we were first starting out. Whenever he shares a memory with me it makes me smile but at the same time, it makes me sad. He and I will never be those young, crazy college kids ever again. “Time marches on,” as they say.

Like I said in the beginning, for years of my life I obsessed over desiring to change my past. The reason was that my past was full of shame. Shame over my impure actions; shame over being raped; shame over how I dealt with being raped. The biggest source of my shame, though, was how I treated God through all my hurt. Sure, people will tell me it’s understandable, but that has never really comforted me in any way. All my shame was such a heavy, heavy burden. I liken it to a weighted blanket that just keeps getting heavier every year until you feel like you can’t breathe and you’ll smother to death.

I thought if I could just change the past–change the outcomes–then I could free myself of the shame and be happy with myself again. It was a fruitless effort and, deep down, I knew it. That didn’t prevent me, though, from imagining that I had made better choices by picking better boyfriends. “If only…” became a constant mantra in my head.

The thing was, was that I wanted a different story to tell my kids about my high school days. I wanted to tell them that their mom was good and someone to look up to. I wanted them to be proud of my actions, but I didn’t have that kind of story. I was everything I would never want for them in my high school days and that caused me a lot of grief. Some of the bad things that happened to me in high school were because of the poor choices of others; but, a lot of the bad things that happened to me were because of my poor choices. I didn’t want my shameful actions to make them ashamed of me.

To add to that, when I first started dating my would-be husband, I struggled with my shame. I was madly in love with him, but I doubted if I was worthy of him being madly in love with me. He deserved a woman that was clean, and pure, and not tainted with darkness. Initially, the shame that I felt made it nearly impossible for me to believe his compliments and adoration. I felt utterly unworthy and I didn’t want him to love someone so broken. In an effort to push him away, I spilled out my dark secrets thinking that he’d run before things got too serious. But, he didn’t run. He stayed and his love is a big reason why I was finally able to heal.

As many of you know, when we got married, he was Catholic and I was Protestant. Pretty much every Sunday early on, we met on the battlefield to square off about Catholicism. We always fought after going to church. Nice, huh? But, through a lot of patience and solid arguments on my husband’s part, I eventually realized that I needed, more than anything, to become Catholic. One thing, though, scared the living daylights out of me…my first Confession.

I sat across from Father Chuck that day with a beating heart and tears threatening to pour forth. Before we started, I said to Father Chuck, “Father, I have a huge sin to confess. It’s horrible.”

He smiled the most calm, reassuring smile and said, “Just start talking to Jesus. It will be okay.”

That was the day that the dam broke in my soul. All the weight of the shame I had been carrying busted forth like a pent-up river. Tears streamed down my face and I choked through sobs. A human soul can only carry so much shame around before it threatens to overtake. Through that entire confession, I felt Christ saying to me, “Just give it to me, Amy. Let me take this bad and make it good.” Thankfully, I did.

As Father Chuck said the words of absolution over me, I felt a lightness that is impossible to describe. From that day forward, I have never been the same. I gave all my sin, shame, and hurt of the past to Christ and decided to trust Him with my full healing. My husband could take me so far, I needed Christ for the rest.

My past is my story. I cannot change it and at this point in my life, it’s no longer a desire. Obviously, I will always wish that I wasn’t abused but there is nothing that can be done about that. It shaped my life for better or worse. What Christ did was help me see that the dark things in our past can be turned around to be used for good. That’s where the victory comes in.

Shame is a weapon of the devil. The purpose is to convince us that our sins make us unloveable and unwanted by God. Shame makes us loathe ourselves and therefore deem ourselves unworthy of coming to Christ and asking for help. I thought my sins were so big that God couldn’t forgive them. However, I am not bigger than God and no sin can outdo His love. That was what I learned in Confession. I just needed to let Him in so He could overwhelm my shame with His love and mercy.

I don’t worry anymore about my children being ashamed of me. They have a mother with lots of scars and imperfect stories, but that hasn’t stopped me from loving them with more than I think my heart can hold sometimes. I hope that my past is an example to them that God redeems sinners, even a big sinner like me. I, also, don’t feel unworthy of my husband’s love anymore. While there are times when ghosts of the past creep up and make me feel insecure, I know I can tell him that, and he’ll be patient with me and love me through it. Even when I had turned my back on God, He still loved me so much that He blessed me with my perfect man.

But, most of all, I know that Christ is always willing and ready to heal me in the confessional. It’s a beautiful, life-giving grace we find there that reminds us how loved we truly are by an all-powerful God. Nothing we bring Him is too great for His love and mercy. And I think if we learn to entrust our past to God, we will find the weight of all our shame lifted away. I am eternally grateful that God got through to my stubborn, shame-filled heart.

May the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding, be with you, Catholic Pilgrims.