Shame, Hope and Changing Narratives

Thirty years ago last month a church we planted in the Kansas City area held it’s first worship service. For nineteen years it was my privilege to be the founding and senior pastor of that church. 

It was a good church. Really good people and creative ministry and I miss it still. 

I had to leave because I was an addict struggling in my recovery, making bad choices. It crushed me to leave my church—even as my addiction was crushing me too. Worse was the pain it caused my wife, my family and my friends. 

In the eleven years since, I often thought that I’d lost the thing that was the highest point and greatest achievement of my working life and ministry. 

We all have a narrative of our lives running through our heads. It’s how we try and make sense of things, sorting our experiences into a coherent story in which we hope to find meaning.

I’d created a personal narrative of severe judgment, shame and loss. 

Over these last few years, I’ve revised my narrative.

What I have the privilege of doing now—speaking, teaching and coaching about genuine spirituality and healthy recovery—is exactly where I’m supposed to be. 

I still miss my congregation and the community we had together. But in many ways I see now how all my life experiences—including my sins and shame--have brought me to a place of crucial usefulness. I am truly humbled and grateful. 

Most of us have experienced some failure or major disappointment in our lives. Sometimes we’ve suffered negative, even severe consequences. It’s easy for these losses to submerge us in shame and become our dominant narrative. 

But it’s not supposed to be that way. 

God holds us all. God alone has the right and the wisdom to judge our lives, to say who we are.

And that means there is always hope. 

Hope for real change, hope for ultimate meaning and hope for useful purpose. 

That’s why we do what we do at LivingIntegrated. We help people get their lives back from compulsive sexual behaviors, one life at a time.

What is your narrative today? How do you see yourself, your history?

Are you content with it? Grateful for it? 

Or do you want to change it? 

Either way, it’s your narrative—and at the same time it belongs to God.

And that’s the ultimate work of healthy recovery and healthy spirituality: living a life we are grateful for. 

And knowing God holds our life in unending love. tcr