So what was supposed to be a night of worship (or so they say, lol), turned into a night of released shame. Hope, our coordinator, talked of this guy who gave out post cards and asked ppl to write down their biggest secret and send it back to him anonymously. Well apparently this began a huge movement with websites and all that jazz. I was cool with that and in theory I thought it was a great thing….for them. I’ve been taught that you don’t go airing your dirty laundry. But she challenged us to share that thing that ate us up with shame and ppl started to share. I “mourned with those who mourned” and everything but I was not about tell these ppl I hadn’t known longer than my toothbrush, my biggest darkest secret. I mean, no one knew of this except my counselor and I had every intention of keeping it that way. Needless to say, the Lord tugged on my heart the entire night. I piggybacked off of ppls confessions and thought that was enough bc I too had dealt with them but the Lord kept tugging for that one. Besides, those weren’t really secrets bc I have told at least one other person about those. But that one….
We get to the end of the night and the leaders start to wrap up and get ready to pray. YES!!! I dodged a bullet. Then one of the guys gets up, interrupts the closing remarks and confesses the same sin that the Lord had been tugging on my heart about. DANG-NABBIT. As he closed, a lump in my throat tightened to almost near suffocation. I spoke up. I shared with my squad and they surrounded me, prayed and loved on me. They allowed me to grieve in that moment. They didn’t allow me to walk in shame even though I went to bed that night knowing I would wake up and have some type of protest outside of my tent. No, not at all. The next morning the same smiling faces greeted me as if I never said a thing. What? Yeah. Forgiveness is a mind blowing thing. It was something I still hadn’t grasped for myself, yet my squad demonstrated that to me in an instant. Yeah. Really that’s all I can say. God is the balm of Gilead and His tangible representation of that to me was that night, you know, that one time in Guatemala……He took my shame.
