No One Will Know
Shame has a deceptive way of convincing us that we need to hide ourselves from the outside world – at all cost – much like the way Adam and Eve hid themselves from God. We go to great lengths to protect our secrets. At its worst, shame will lead us to sacrifice good things in our lives just to preserve and protect the secrets inside. Many a person has sacrificed their marriage, family, career, reputation, and so much more at the altar of shame and secrecy.
We’ve Pretty Much Locked In
By the time we get to the secrecy element of the shame cycle, we’ve pretty much locked in on following through with acting out, whether big or small. Our inhibitions have been drastically lowered by the shame messages we’ve played over and over in our heads, so we have set ourselves up to be vulnerable to nearly any temptation that promises to numb our pain. If God is in the conversation at this point, it’s typically us begging Him to give us the strength to say “no” to ourselves. Then when we cave in to temptation, we’re mad at God for not hearing our prayer.
It’s not our sin that we’re hiding at this point. We’re actually trying to hide ourselves and our internalized shame because we don’t want anyone to witness our vulnerability or try to talk us out of succumbing to our indulgence. Our shame has prevailed over our will, and we’ve reached the “point of no return.”
I became a master of hiding my secret. Not just my occasional secret rendezvous with pornography. I mean the secret reality that my interactions with people I cared about would evoke a wave of insecurity inside me. An insecurity that if I said or did the wrong thing, or if I didn’t say or do the right thing, the person might disapprove of me. Wow, that sounds ridiculous as I hear myself say it.
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