Redeeming Shame: A journey toward healing in Christ

In this episode of the Higher Pursuit Podcast, host Cecily Lachapelle discusses the profound impact of shame and how it can be repurposed into honor through faith in Jesus Christ. She shares her personal experiences with shame, particularly stemming from her past trauma, and emphasizes the importance of understanding the difference between guilt and shame. The conversation explores the roots of shame, its effects on identity and relationships, and offers biblical insights on healing. Cecily provides practical steps for listeners to acknowledge their shame, receive God's forgiveness, and use their stories for good, culminating in a prayer for healing and release from shame.

Takeaways

• Shame is a universal experience that many carry.
• Guilt is about actions, while shame is about identity.
• Shame often originates from childhood experiences.
• The roots of shame can lead to various emotional struggles.
• Shame can impact relationships and self-worth.
• Biblical teachings provide hope and healing from shame.
• God can repurpose shame into honor and purpose.
• Sharing personal stories can help others heal.
• Acknowledging shame is the first step to healing.
• God promises to replace shame with joy and blessings.

Sound Bites

• "Shame is a universal experience."
• "Shame makes us want to hide."
• "Jesus took your shame."
• "God promises to replace shame with joy."
• "I declare freedom over you."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Repurposing Pain
01:00 Understanding Shame and Its Origins
09:46 The Impact of Shame on Identity
16:27 Biblical Perspective on Shame
20:49 Steps to Repurpose Shame into Glory
25:10 Prayer for Healing and Release

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Repurposing Pain
• 1:00 Understanding Shame and Its Origins
• 9:46 The Impact of Shame on Identity
• 16:27 Biblical Perspective on Shame
• 20:49 Steps to Repurpose Shame into Glory
• 25:10 Prayer for Healing and Release

Transcript

Cecily Lachapelle (00:01.08)

Call me and welcome to the Higher Pursuit Podcast. I'm so glad you joined us. I'm your host, Cecily Lachapelle, and I'm a Bible lover, I'm a follower of Jesus, and I'm the author of the book Repurpose Your Pain. If you're someone who believes that your fate should connect to a larger purpose, both in your personal life and in the world, then you have tuned into the right podcast. In case you're new here, the series that we're in right now is called Repurposing Our Pain.

And today I'm going to be talking about repurposing the pain of shame. Now this is a sensitive but a vital conversation because shame is something that many of us carry either because of something that was done to us as I write about in my book or because of something or things that we've done to ourselves. When I was 16, I was the victim of a date rape. I was the

young girl, working my job in Boston. And I thought that I had the world by the tail. I thought it was way more mature than I was. And I got myself into a situation that I wasn't prepared for. And I'm not going to tell the whole story because you can read about it in the book, but needless to say, I woke up the next morning realizing that I had been date raped.

And at that point, there was absolutely no talk about date rape drugs. mean, this is back when dinosaurs ruled the earth. And unfortunately, because of that, I had no idea what happened. I immediately assumed that this was my fault, that I had done this because I made a stupid choice and went out on a date with a guy I didn't know.

And so I just felt that I did this and the shame that I carried, had to suppress. I pushed it so far under the surface and that experience created deep rooted shame in my life that for a long time felt overwhelming and hard to overcome. For many years, I actually suppressed the memory so far down that I didn't remember it for about 15 years.

Cecily Lachapelle (02:26.997)

until I saw a documentary and all of a sudden the memories started coming back. So here's why we need to talk about the topic. Because shame is a universal experience, but as Christians, we can find hope and healing in Jesus Christ. In this episode, we're going to dive into how God can help us repurpose shame into honor. And that might seem impossible for you now when you're looking at the shame that you're dealing with, either because of something you did or something that was done to you, it might seem impossible that anything good can come out of it. So hang with me here, because the truth is that you can break free from those shackles of shame, and you can walk in the freedom and the peace that Jesus purchased for you. Both the Apostle Paul and Peter quote Isaiah 28-16 that says, whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So the truth is that Jesus Christ replaces our shame with honor. And I know that that's an almost unbelievable act of repurposing that we're going to delve into in a moment. But before we get too far, let's just make sure that we're all defining shame the same way. First of all, we have to understand the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is feeling bad about something you've done, but shame is feeling like you are bad because either the thing that was done to you or something that was done by you. So many of us have experienced painful events or lived in emotionally unhealthy environments that planted a root of shame deep inside us. And just like any plant, roots grow fruit. And so if we are experiencing the fruit of shame in our lives, it all started with a seed that got planted in our heart and in our mind and it became part of our personality and our psyche through an experience, either an event or a series of events. And those can cause toxic shame and make us believe that we're not good enough.

Cecily Lachapelle (04:53.217)

And this lasting and intense internal shame, it often develops in childhood. That's where most of those seeds are planted in us. When we're still developing a sense of ourselves and we're the most susceptible to those critical messages from parents, from teachers, from coaches, or maybe it was an aunt or an uncle. And then we internalize these critical messages and we globalize them to believe we are bad. And it creates that lens of shame. Can any of you relate to what I'm saying right now? Maybe you grew up in a home where nothing you did was right. And so the seed of criticism and judgment was planted in your heart. Or maybe you were abused as a child. Or maybe it was later in your life, like me, and in your 12 years, something happened to you, something was done to you.

Or you did something, you made choices that went beyond regret, went deep into your psyche as shame. When a person is rooted in shame, if they receive stimuli that are similar to the event that caused the feelings of shame in the first place, they can actually have physiological responses like their behavior, their speech, their heart rate, their motor skills might be impacted. For some other people, Perfectionism sets in. That might be one of the fruits that causes them to hate doing things that they might fail at, that they feel might display that they're broken, that they're not enough. So they get frozen in a situation that they can't completely control and they'll just choose to do nothing at all. Others feel unworthy of love. So they expect rejection. They expect breakups or bad things to happen because they don't feel worthy of love, blessing, favor, anything. Others struggle with openness and vulnerability, especially if you get close to a conversation about that area of shame. And this might lead to performance and pretending. I was really big in the performance and the pretending arena. Those are two fruits of the root of shame.

Cecily Lachapelle (07:20.011)

that I really struggled with. And this can cause relational challenges with people close to them. I don't know about any of you women out there, but we as gals, sometimes we can really struggle with female friendships. If we had challenges with close friends when we were young, maybe when we were kids, maybe when we were teenagers, and then you couple that with a personality and a psyche that is rooted in shame, it makes us not want to be vulnerable with anyone. And so as a result, we're never the real us. We're all judging other people by the way they appear, but we are never truly ourselves in any situation because we can't let our wall down. And in romantic relationships,That also causes a problem when we're not our authentic self. People rooted in shame carry a feeling of being unclean. I know I did. And even though I had pushed and suppressed that memory, the date rate so far down in my memory that for years I didn't remember it, the emotion of it, that subconscious feeling that I was unclean, that I was broken beyond repair. always lingered. When somebody is mired in shame, oftentimes they struggle in setting goals because they don't believe that they're worthy or capable of accomplishing great things. I know that people call PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, but I also think that there is a variant called post-traumatic shame disorder. When we get triggered, by a situation that was like the event that caused the shame or that planted that root of shame on the inside of us. And we all of a sudden begin to feel and act and react in this completely different situation as if we are back in that event. And it's because shame has taken us captive. So let's get a biblical understanding of shame.

Cecily Lachapelle (09:46.623)

It started where everything started with mankind, in Genesis, when Adam and Eve fell. What was the first thing they did? They tried to cover up. Shame makes us want to hide, both from God and from other people. And like I said, there's two kinds of shame. There's shame from things that are done to us and shame from things that we just do to ourselves. So it's really interesting.

I recently went to my high school reunion and I am not going to tell you what year it was that we were celebrating because I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I had been out of high school for that many decades. But anyway, when we were sitting around the table at the first night of dinner, we were out on this lawn and I had gone to a boarding school for high school, as you probably read about in the book if you've read it. And I was stunningly miserable during that time. And so as we were talking around the table and we were talking about what we were like when we were in high school and how different we are now, I started to share about how miserable I was and what a tree wreck I was my sophomore and junior year before I received the Lord. And these ladies were stunned to hear that I was so overcome by shame and self-hatred. They were blown away when I said that I was saturated with shame, shame over the binging and purging that I was doing, over stealing and lying and smoking and eventually my sexual activity with boys, I was drowning in shame for the sinful things that I was doing on top of the shame connected to the things that were done to me. These women were shocked because they said, well, you always looked so confident. You seem like the who the world was their oyster. So we have to bear in mind that the people that we're dealing with day to day that might seem so confident.

Cecily Lachapelle (12:08.681)

they might be struggling with shame. And one of the other comments that I make in my book is that if you have already repurposed one of these pains, don't think that you don't have anything to offer or that your journey with that pain point is over. Because now that you've taken that territory and you have a testimony of how God has led you through that dark place and brought you to the other side, God, if you are expecting Him to, will bring you across the path of somebody who needs to know and hear exactly what you have to say. So after I shared my testimony that night, two women at the table came up to me afterwards and said, thank you so much for sharing that. I never knew that about you. And then they started to open up about their own struggles. That would never have happened if I hadn't just, vulnerably and openly shared about my season of shame. What about you? What are you feeling? Are you struggling with shame? Do you feel like, you know, I should have known better. I should have made better choices. Do you feel like now you're stuck in an identity that's unredeemable? I felt that way.

Or maybe you feel like there's something broken in you, that you're like a factory reject because of something that was done to you that you can't undo. Or maybe you feel like you will never be able to please God, yourself or others because of the choices that you've made. Or maybe it's a financial setback or a challenge that caused you to lose your home or you were fired from a job.

Or you continue to struggle financially and you feel like your financial status is screaming to the world that you're not enough. Or maybe you've had a string of broken relationships and the accuser is telling you that people reject you because you're not worth changing for or fighting for, that your critical parents or your past lovers were right all the time. Or maybe you had a parent, a spouse, or a child who was an addict.

Cecily Lachapelle (14:30.891)

and you felt like their behavior brought shame upon your family, your name, even your DNA. You feel like people are judging you and you hear messages in your head like, if you were enough, if you were good enough, your mother, your father, your spouse, your child would have fought harder against their addiction. If you were a better parent, you would have found a way to fix your child, to save your child.

I heard that message when my son was in and out of rehabs, in and out of jail, in and out of hospitals. When you're sitting in a courtroom watching your son get convicted and hauled off to jail, it's next to impossible to fight off the wave of accusation and shame that says, know, good parents raise children that make good choices. Bad parents raise children that make bad choices. Do the math.

I have fought the accuser as both a girl on the run from Cod and as a daughter of the Lord who should have known better. Shame is an equal opportunity accuser. It seeks to pull us away from the Father and tell us that we are beyond the restoring power of God. The enemy doesn't want you to know that Jesus didn't just come to forgive sin. He came to heal the broken hearted and to restore you completely. Romans 8.1 says, is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Second Corinthians 5.17 says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. So in Jesus Christ, when you receive Jesus and you have become raised, in the likeness of Christ, how is there any more shame or condemnation? Jesus took it all at the cross. He took your shame. He took your judgment. He took your punishment. He became your sin. He also, and this is the thing you need to hear, became the sin of those who sinned against you.

Cecily Lachapelle (16:57.875)

So all that has been done to you and all that you have done has been paid for at the cross. Jesus has made you new. God's grace redeems shame. So throughout my walk with Jesus over the last 40 years, I've been doing the work of repurposing my shame into the honor and the glory that Jesus has given me in its place.

Zephaniah 319 became a major scripture for me. I remember specifically when I was feeling ashamed when my ex-husband left. It felt to me like if I was a good enough wife, then he wouldn't have left. And so now everyone who knows us and everyone I will ever meet is going to know that I was broken, that I wasn't good enough, I wasn't worth fighting for, I wasn't worth standing in for. And this scripture from Zephaniah 3.19 became one of the verses that was my cornerstone, my stability, my safe place to come back to. And it says, will change your shame into praise and renown in all the earth. So God is saying, instead of letting shame define me, He is going to use it as my platform to minister to others. It's not my renown, not my praise. It's going to be God's praise and God's renown. He's going to receive the glory for the fact that there were shameful things that I did. And now He is using me for His great purpose and nothing that the devil could throw at me could stop the new creation of God from happening in my life and from being made manifest. Nothing can stop the fruit of salvation, the fruit of Christ's victory from coming forth in my life. Nothing I have done and nothing that was done to me can stop the purpose of God from coming forth in my life. I had to go through a process though of learning the truth of what the word said.

Cecily Lachapelle (19:21.099)

of who I was as a child of God, and then allowing that truth to renew my thoughts and replace the shame-filled view that I had of myself. So I read scriptures like the one I just quoted to you from Zephaniah. I also read other ones like Isaiah 54, 4. It says, don't fear. You will not be put to shame. And do not feel humiliated and ashamed, for you will not be disgraced. I had to allow the truth to repurpose my past shame into a new personal perspective of God's glory being made manifest in my life, of Him covering me with His glory, of Him receiving the glory from what He did in my life. He took me as a trophy of His grace that He holds up to the enemy and says, look, you gave her your best shot, but it wasn't enough.

Look what I have done and am doing in her life. And that gives God all the glory. So now I want to talk to you about how we take what the enemy meant for evil and return it for good. So if you're like me, you love stories, but you need steps. So let's discuss the steps that you're going to need to begin to repurpose your shame into glory. First of all, acknowledge the shame. Hearing begins when we stop hiding and we bring our shame to the light. This can be through prayer, counseling, sharing with a trusted friend. And then second of all, receive God's forgiveness and love. Whether your shame comes from sin that was done to you or sin that you did to yourself, God offers unconditional love and grace.

Psalm 103:12 says that he removes our sin as far as the east is from the west. It is not coming back around. This is not a boomerang. And number three, replace the lies of shame with God's truth. Shame lies to you about your identity. So it is critical that you meditate on scriptures that tell you who you are in Christ.

Cecily Lachapelle (21:45.911)

that you are loved, that you are redeemed, that you are worthy. And then number four, use your story for good. God can repurpose your story of shame to encourage other people, to bring hope and healing to people who are struggling in silence. Your testimony can set other people free. Just like when I shared my testimony at my reunion and those women

All these decades later, all of a sudden started to open up. They started to become vulnerable. Our conversations went to a whole deeper level. Shame does not have to define your life because in Christ there is redemption and restoration. So I want to encourage you with Isaiah 61-7. This is a great scripture for shame.

You should write this one down. Instead of your shame, you will receive a double portion. And instead of disgrace, you will rejoice in your inheritance. Folks, this is a stellar, cheaper promise. Because God is saying, whatever shame you carry, the glory and the portion of your inheritance, the goodness of God,

the grace and the favor and the mercy and the love and the delight of God, all that is yours, your inheritance in Christ, is going to be double, double any shame, pain that you have felt. And instead of disgrace, you're going to rejoice in your inheritance. Instead of your head hanging low, instead of feeling like you don't have anything to offer, instead of feeling like You're broken. You can't move past this. You are going to rejoice in your inheritance. And your inheritance is locking you to your purpose in the kingdom of God. God promises to replace shame with joy, purpose, and blessing. So I want to invite you right now, if you haven't already done this, surrender your shame to Jesus today.

Cecily Lachapelle (24:10.301)

I love journaling and I have found in my walk with the Lord that journaling is a phenomenal way for me to really start to take the time to pause and to think about what I'm thinking about. Because just the act of writing or typing causes our mind to have to slow down. It causes our mind to have to meditate more.

And we dig deeper when we are writing. So if you're going to surrender your shame, I recommend that you either journal it or write it in a notebook somewhere so that you have that written record of what you are handing over to the Lord. And now I just want to pray a prayer of release over you. And we're going to ask God to take your shame and repurpose it for His glory before we close. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much that you are the God of healing, that you were the God of resurrection. And Jesus, you are the King of kings and the Lord of lords. You are our victorious champion. So every weapon that has been formed against us, it cannot prosper because of the work that you have done.

And we quench every fiery dart that the enemy is shooting against us with our shield of faith. And it's our faith in the cross that you paid for our sin. You took our shame. You took the pain of our judgment. And then when you rose from the dead, we had been raised in the likeness of Christ, raised as pure and holy and glorious children of God.

We don't always feel holy, Lord. We don't always feel glorious and we certainly don't always act it. But in the spirit, in your eyes, we are the righteousness of God in Christ. So Holy Spirit, I just ask that you would imprint this truth on our hearts so that when the enemy comes to bring up those thoughts and those memories and those triggers of shame, that we are armed. We are ready. We have the word of God.

Cecily Lachapelle (26:35.339)

and it's tucked away in our hearts and we can pull it out and we can use it as a weapon against the enemy when he comes in to try to take us down with shame. And so right now I pray for your people and I thank you Lord God for freedom. I declare freedom over them. I declare that the bondage of shame breaks now in the mighty and the powerful name of Jesus. I declare that every bondage of sin, every memory

And the pain of every memory is dismantled now in the name of Jesus because the newness of life in Christ Jesus is greater. Greater are they in Christ than he that is in the world. We thank you for that, Lord God. And we thank you that you are the Redeemer of even the most painful parts of our life in Jesus' Amen. All right, folks. Well, I want you to tune in next week because I have a really great interview coming up for you. I'm gonna be interviewing sober coach and motivational speaker, Eric Fredrickson about his harrowing story of alcohol and drug addiction. I've read his book. It is amazing. We're gonna be talking about the book. We're gonna be talking about his testimony. So he walked out of shame. You wanna talk about someone who had a lot of reason to be captive to shame. It was him.

So you want to tune in next week and tell anyone you know that next week's podcast is going to be a fantastic interview. I also want to encourage you to stay connected to this podcast, Into Our Ministry, Higher Pursuit Ministries, by subscribing and you share the podcast or follow for future episodes on repurposing your pain and living free in Christ. And as always, I love you. I thank you so much for tuning in and I'm praying for you. May God bless you as you repurpose

Your shame into glory. Amen.