shame

On The Fringe: The Truth About The Struggle To Belong

April 25, 2020 by Matt Pavlik 3 Comments

Reading time: 3 minutes

Fringe, a TV show about weird, scientifically unexplainable events in the universe, debuted in 2008. It drew my interest at first because of the possibilities of the unknown. Because, well, exploring the mysteries of life is exciting.

“Fringe” can have a much broader definition than scientific anomalies. It has a connotation of “flaky” or “fragile.” If someone is teetering on the edge of an abyss they are on the fringe. They are one step away from slipping out of a meaningful existence. They are like Frodo when he puts on the evil ring; he must fight to not be drawn into the shadow world.

Non-Christians are on the Fringe

Without Christ, it’s easy to become lost in an endless pursuit of mysterious unknowns. Maybe there is something of substance beyond the fringe? Maybe an alien race is monitoring our every move. What else is out there?

You can become hooked on the lottery for the same reasons. Having lots of money sounds good, so it must be a good idea to buy into the lottery. I’ve got nothing else to do. I’ve got nothing to lose. — even though the odds of winning are small. You might say you have a fringe of a chance.

The craving to seek and discover is a good (God-given) desire. However, some people will tenaciously pursue strange, made-up phenomena, while at the same time refusing to acknowledge the existence of a real God that cries out to them through His creation.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:20 NIV

One definition of fringe is being “at the part of something that is farthest from the center.” This describes non-Christians quite well. They are present, able to see but choosing to face away from the center and pursue the outermost fringes of God’s creation. They keep hoping to find the fulfillment of their inner hunger in anything but God.

Are You, Christian, on The Fringe?

Another definition of fringe is “not completely belonging to or accepted by a group of people who share the same job, activities, etc.” It’s possible to be a Christian and know Christ, but still feel like you are on the fringe. This shouldn’t be so.

Do you feel like you are on the fringe? Are you hanging in the balance? Do you know you have worth, but can’t seem to feel your true worth in Christ?

Christ calls all who belong to Him to move toward Him. Because of His awesome sacrifice, all who are far away from the center are able to move toward the center.

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:16 NIV

“I am weird” and “I am worthless” are lies. Just because others don’t understand you (even other Christians) or you haven’t found a way to meet your needs doesn’t mean you are fringe material. Every one of God’s people belongs.

Living according to God’s plan for you means you will need to walk a different path than others walk. You have God’s favor as you walk on the path He made for you (see John 21:20-23).

God smiles as He thinks of you. God is always thinking about you. God is smiling at you. Look up to see His face.

Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;
no shadow of shame will darken their faces.
Psalm 34:5 NLT

Learn more about belonging.
More on the TV show at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fringe_(TV_series)
Definition from https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/on-the-fringes-of-something
Image by Aravind kumar from Pixabay

3 Steps To Overcoming Shame

April 7, 2019 by Matt Pavlik 4 Comments

Reading time: 4 minutes

Shame is the inability to tolerate being known. There is no end to being known. Every day is new. Every day brings more ways you can know and be known. This can be threatening to the person who feels shame intensely.

Shame results from becoming confused about the truth after lies are introduced into your mind. The lies provide an alternative to the truth and therefore an alternative to trusting God.

People who feel shame will instinctively hide: from themselves, from others, and from God. This is exactly what Adam and Eve did after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They acquired a sense of their inadequacy because they could no longer believe God.

“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees.
Genesis 3:4-8 NLT

The opposite of hiding in shame is being authentic. Here are three practical ways to reverse the effects of shame.

Know Yourself to Overcome Shame

Before you can share yourself with others, you must first be willing to know yourself.

Being willing to be known is a discipline. Sometimes the cost of being known isn’t worth the reward. Hiding seems better than facing the humiliation of being known. There are times when you won’t be ready for the exposure. That’s okay for the moment.

However, the more you hide, the more you remain hidden even from yourself. It’s not that you’ve forgotten who you are, but more like you’ve never given yourself a chance to understand who you are.

But hiding in shame isn’t really an option for the Christian. God won’t let you hide forever. You are salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16). He calls each of us out of hiding and into a relationship with Him, others, and ourselves.

The more you know the truth about yourself, the more you’ll know how you can contribute to others. You don’t always have to receive; eventually, you’ll know what you can give.

Study and Journal to Overcome Shame

If you struggle to tolerate being known, keeping a private journal is the least risky way to begin. Make time to write consistently. As you journal and reread your writing, you begin to see yourself from an outside perspective.

What should you write about? Read the Bible and other helpful materials that teach you who you are. Then write about what the truths stir up in your heart.

Share Yourself with Others to Overcome Shame

Choose a trusted person and begin to share verbally. Practice putting into words what you’re feeling inside, entrusting your private life to another. Receive their acceptance and care.

Remember that God is a person too. Pay attention to how He speaks to you whether directly or indirectly through others.

Share publically, but discriminantly. Share more with everyone you know. This doesn’t mean being an open book to everyone. Healthy people discriminate how much they share with each person. However, as you heal, you should be able to share more freely with more people.

Share Yourself with God to Overcome Shame

Some parts of ourselves only God knows. Can you completely put your inner feelings of shame into clear words for others to understand? Maybe. Can you receive the truth of who you are completely through words alone? Unlikely.

As you grow in being genuine with others, you grow in readiness to receive healing from God. His acceptance is the only true antidote to shame. He can address your shame at the core through a deeply spiritual, relational transaction. Essentially, God reveals who He is to you in order to cure your shame.

Shame is difficult to overcome. It’s easy to fear the unknown. And it’s ten times harder when that unknown is you.

Where are you on your journey to overcoming shame?

Remember Your Past For A Healthy Present

May 24, 2020 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Reading time: 3 minutes

How does remembering your past help you today? Think of re-membering as bringing scattered parts of your life together. It’s like gathering the parts of a jigsaw puzzle and assembling them together where they belong.

God wants you to see the whole picture of who you are. Have you ever worked on a puzzle only to get to the end and realize some pieces are missing? It’s frustrating because it feels so incomplete.

I’m fascinated by my past. I’m not thinking of historical facts. I mean my psychological and emotional journey. Memories are important because they are the key to setting a person free from being trapped in the past.

You can’t change what has happened to you but you can change its meaning. You decided how much a particular memory has the power to define who you are. They answer the question: How did I get to where I am today?

How you first experience something has long-lasting implications. Your journey is, in many ways, a series of first-time experiences. To put the pieces of your life together, you must revisit your first-time experiences to create follow-on experiences. Healing can be both strengthening the positive memories and weakening the negative ones.

Questions to Help You Remember

Your relationship with your childhood memories can tell you a lot about yourself. Here are some questions you can use to explore your emotional health:

How do you feel about your childhood?
Do you feel like you are still a child?
Do you feel like you are stuck in your childhood?
Do you feel extremely distant from childhood, almost like it was another lifetime?
Does childhood feel real to you or more like a fantasy?
Does childhood seem unimportant or highly relevant to you?
Do you remember a lot or a little?
How much was childhood the same or different every day?
What positive memories come to mind?
What negative memories come to mind?

Did you skim through these questions or pause on each one and give a real, in-depth answer? Are you willing to embrace your childhood or do you think you’d be happier if you never thought about it again?

Even if you considered only one of the questions, you’ve got a taste of what it’s like to move toward emotional health. You dipped your toe in the water. If you considered more than one, you might feel overwhelmed as you swim in a pool of emotional memories.

As I said, memories are fascinating. They aren’t part of who you are. Yet, in another way, they are part of you. You’re not five years old anymore. But you might feel five years old sometimes.

Remember the Past, Compare it with the Present, and Plan the Future

Here are a few more questions for you to consider: In what ways do you feel the same, today, as you did when you were a young child? In what ways are you the same? In what ways are you different?

Life can lead you away from being in touch with who you are. The pressures, demands, and trauma open a chasm between your performance and who you are. It’s possible to become so familiar with present-day performance (life responsibilities) that you forget what it’s like to enjoy life on your own terms.

Here are three more questions that should help you “pull yourself together.” What day would you most like to relive? What makes life worth living today? Now, what new day do you imagine you would like to live in the near future?

In answering all these questions, look for two things. First, look for any infections: emotional wounds that haven’t fully healed. Second, look for peak experiences: emotional highs that give you energy.

If you’d like more practice at developing follow-on experiences, then you should try a book from my Journal Your Way series.

More about the benefits of exploring your past.
Image by Nato Pereira from Pixabay
Last updated 2022/12/11

Be Close And Feel No Shame

August 29, 2021 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Reading time: 4 minutes

To be close to someone requires that you reveal who you are. Unfortunately, because of the fall, we can experience shame by believing that we are ugly (deformed) in some way, even though God never intended us to experience this.

Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.
Genesis 2:25 NLT

That sums up the primary goal of marriage. Can you reveal who you are and what you really want, without hesitation or embarrassment? Can you do it with someone of the opposite sex who might not understand you so well?

You can be rejected and feel ashamed at the same time, but you don’t have to. If someone chooses to reject you, your response might range from indifference to depressed, to feeling deeply ashamed.

There’s no greater stress on your soul than feeling ashamed. To feel humiliated is to believe that your greatest desire will never be fulfilled. It happens when you honestly admit what you want more than anything while simultaneously accepting that the culmination of your desire is impossible, and therefore, something must be hopelessly wrong with who you are.

Freedom Enables Closeness

Freedom allows for longing to grow. When you have freedom, you can be aware of what you want and be allowed to pursue it.

Control is the opposite of freedom. It has to do with insecurity which can originate from the belief I am not worth being pursued. When you feel unattractive (whether by physical appearance or within your being), it’s tempting to force closeness (to prove worth) or distance (to avoid feeling worthless) in relationships.

So you can see how togetherness and separateness can be in conflict in marriage. Freedom allows your spouse to feel their desire to be with you. It allows both of you to be who God created you to be.

Love and Respect Enable Closeness

The desire for acceptance and the likelihood of experiencing shame promote defensiveness. But the resulting distance produces loneliness which isn’t good either (Genesis 2:18).

Love and respect affirm a person’s identity. They are the antidote to shame, so without them, shame is certain. Love and respect can’t be faked, so you must cultivate them genuinely.

Genuine togetherness occurs when both husband and wife desire to be together. You can encourage a desire for closeness by focusing on the positive qualities of both you and your spouse. You are both made in God’s image, so even when you might not be able to see positives qualities, they exist.

Separateness Enables Closeness

God didn’t make a husband and wife to be together 100% of the time. To be literally one would make the need for two obsolete. Instead, “one” means to function as one–to be on the same team. Members of a volleyball team would be much less effective if they were joined at the hip (too close) or if they played independently of each other (too separate). Their effectiveness increases as they cooperate but perform distinct functions. The strongest team will have diversified (not redundant) members who function together to achieve a purpose greater than they can achieve apart.

Marriage is more challenging than volleyball. It’s easier to be on the same team in volleyball because the skills required are fewer and simpler. The playing field is divided into two parts. The opponents are clearly visible. The objective is in plain sight.

When you lose sight of the purpose of marriage the team analogy becomes less understandable, but it’s no less valid. Conflict in marriage will increase to the degree the team objective is lost. The conflict often results from one or both people wanting too much closeness or too much separateness. A person’s expectations can become not only unhealthy but also impossible to fulfill.

Every relationship has an optimal amount of closeness which can vary depending on the season of life. Paradoxically, knowing how to be skillfully distinct (separate) allows for being the closest possible without feeling ashamed.

You can live knowing you are beautiful today for two reasons:

You are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27).
God reformed you into a new creation without sin (2 Corinthians 5:17, Ephesians 4:24).

For these reasons, you can draw close to God without experiencing shame (Hebrews 4:16) and then also draw close as husband and wife.

For further learning, consider what is the objective of your marriage. How can you support each other on the same team? Ask God to help to see and affirm the positives in your spouse.

All Things New

January 11, 2020 by Matt Pavlik 3 Comments

Reading time: 2 minutes

A traumatic event is not easily forgotten. As you begin this new year, what is one thing you’d like to forget?

If you’re in a car accident, your car doesn’t fix itself. If your tooth develops a cavity, the decay needs to be removed. When something breaks, you must decide what to do with it. Can it be restored? Is there hope, or are you better off cutting your losses?

If nothing will ever change, then hope will be impossible. Then all that remains is suffering.

God introduces the needed change.

I am creating something new. There it is! Do you see it?
I have put roads in deserts, streams in thirsty lands.
Isaiah 43:19 CEV

Because God is making us anew, hope is inevitable. You can change. You don’t have to remain stuck and hopeless. God is rehabilitating you. God wants you to feel hopeful.

Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person. The past is forgotten, and everything is new.
2 Corinthians 5:17 CEV

Forget what happened long ago! Don’t think about the past.
Isaiah 43:18 CEV

The more you can leave behind your past, the better you will be. “Leave behind” is a loaded phrase. It takes significant emotional work to leave behind difficult experiences (memories).

Therefore, to move forward, you first need to move backward. If your carpet is dirty and worn, you need to rip it out before you can install new carpet.

Grieving is the work of leaving behind. Once that raggedy carpet is gone, you can forget about it. But you don’t want to completely forget about it, otherwise, you’ll be more likely to repeat an accident (like spilling grape juice).

Grieving allows you to remember the lesson, but forget about the discomfort and shame. Forget about it. Don’t worry about it. You are free. Once you are free, you are open to all that God has for you.

What is one new thing you want God to do in your life this year?

God Will Deliver You From Failure

August 2, 2020 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Reading time: 2 minutes

How often do you feel discouraged by some kind of failure? If you think you’ve failed, you might say something like:

I really messed up this time.
There’s no hope for me now.
I can’t believe I did that.
I can’t be forgiven for that.
That was my last chance.
My best wasn’t good enough.
God is going to send me to hell.
I’ll never recover from this.
There’s no use trying again.

To believe any of these statements, you must be deceived. Every one of them has something false about it.

A worldly definition of failure has four parts:

You did something.
You weren’t supposed to do it.
You can’t undo it.
You are therefore perpetually caught in shame.

In fact, what makes failure so hideous is not so much the first three, but that last one. The lingering feelings of self-condemnation and self-loathing are unbearable and there appears to be no escape from them.

Sin is probably the best definition of failure. It completely misses what God wants for your life. Without God, you are defective because of sin. But God has stripped sin of its power. So it does not have a significant lasting effect.

Let’s reconsider the definition of failure, but include God this time. A worst-case definition of failure considers it to be only a temporary set-back.

Failure implies some kind of ending. But because God is an eternal being, endings do not exist for Him. Any moment in time is not the final word on your situation.

Failure implies some kind of hopelessness. But God is an endless supply of hope. Nothing can defeat God. Nothing can defeat God’s plans. Nothing can defeat God’s people. Nothing can defeat you.

You can always learn from your experience, even if it seems like an abysmal failure. God is ready to give you another chance. You can start again in a stronger position.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.This poor man called, and the Lord heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles.The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.
Psalm 34:4-7 NIV

So you can see that you will have trouble, but God will deliver you from the trouble. He will deliver you from evil. He will even deliver you from failure.

Image by mojo49 from Pixabay