Crazy protestors are around every corner
I pulled into a private event for one of our Georgia Congressmen to sign holders and chants of “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!”.
The signs were held high and venom was pouring from their lips, and as soon as I was recognized to be a woman, the shouting got a little louder. Apparently, I should be ashamed for attending an event for one of our Congressmen because somewhere in the recesses of the left’s mind, I have violated an unspoken oath of sexual solidarity. I dunno.
My first instinct was to wave. Or at the very least, head into the crowd with my mic and recording device to get to the bottom of their incessant need for attention. But it was hot, I was late, my heels were hurting and mobs aren’t exactly my thing.
I don’t have a mob mentality.
And I never have. I’ve never been interested in running with the pack. It has done me a great service and disservice at times. Since I’m a human being it can be rough going it alone when there is a community ready, willing, yet not always equipped, to heal outside of the proverbial box.
Shame. I have found in eight years of ministry, the number one deterrent to people seeking authentic relationship with others in what is supposed to be the Hospital of Christ, is the left’s buzzword of the day: Shame.
Shame leaves the wounded paralyzed on the battlefield of life. I can vividly visualize a battlefield with bloodied, maimed and the left-for-dead. If we could see the souls and minds of others the way our healer can, we would quite possibly perish instantly. But not from shame, rather grief.
If we knew how many opportunities we took to step over the dying, we would drop dead from the heaviness. If we knew how much shame we fed every time we backed away from a hard conversation or confession, we would quickly pull the practice of the Old Testament sackcloth and fasting and beg for our own mercy.
We keep waiting for Jesus to show up and wash others.
But he entrusted us. We post our cute little signs and slogans as if heaven rejoices because we thought of a more clever way to say choose Jesus right this second or burn in hell forever. We underestimate the hell people already live.
I am fortunate, blessed and prosperous in my relationships. But it wasn’t always so. I didn’t always have someone to call to confess my addictions in life, to ask why I kept jumping into the same toilet bowls of life. I had few people who knew just how much I struggled to simply stay alive while I watched my daughter dying before my eyes. Who was I supposed to tell that I hated the God that was supposed to protect us? Who was I supposed to share my shame with of not being able to provide for my family?
I was an island. And it was hell. Cute signs weren’t going to cut it. Memes weren’t a thing yet and had they been, I would’ve created my own that wouldn’t have been appropriate to share. I had enough shame to host a liberal sit-in that would make Elizabeth Warren wish she was Pocahontas. The hospital of Christ wasn’t open to me. Or at least I thought. And some of you do too.
My encouragement to you in this age of slut, age, race, gender, belief, party, national- shaming, is to recognize your need for community and actively seek it.
Seek a sane, safe, forgiving, truth speaking community. I hope to offer that here. And there are many many resources to plug into to help set your feet back on the path of liberty. Liberation from stinking thinking and being governed by your unnecessary feelings. You feel you are alone because you think alone, but you’re not.
Find someone who is ‘safe’ to confess your faults with, receive your forgiveness and reach back for someone else. We need CNA’s, RN’s PA’s and MD’s in the body. We don’t need sign changers. We need people willing to roll up their sleeves, with or without masks and gloves to wrap their arms around the figuratively dying.
We need you to show up in your communities
We need you to show up whether you feel qualified or not and rally around sane principles that preserve our liberties. We don’t need sinless people, we need people who are overcoming their propensity to fall short while learning that love isn’t a notion. It’s a verb that requires proper application, not co-dependency.
The redeemer of the world despised the shame he endured for the joy set before him. I encourage you today, look that giant of shame in the face with that same mind of despising it and cut off its head. Say no to the disappointment it brings, the identity it tries to heap on you as a blood- bought son or daughter and walk boldly into your destiny. There is a place for you right now, right where you are. Isolation is the language of death.
We are children of life.
Remember, there are more of us than there are of the ones who chant SHAME! as if it actually means something.
This has been a major battleground for me in my own life. And glory be to GOD, he’s walked through that valley of shadow of death with me. Funny thing was, I wasn’t the one dying. It did.
I wanted to take my 4 inch strappy -heal wearing butt across that street and shout back, “Baby! Your little shame sign and megaphone couldn’t stand a chance against the shame giant I’ve had to slay, so take your mantra, your bus ticket back to Sorosville and bite me!”
But like I said, it was too damn hot, my heels were hurting and I was late for the party.
Rise beloved. This is your time.
xo,
