If I were to give a personal definition of shame, it was all the things in my life that were unspeakable. Since about the age of 7 or 8 I started to collect certain things that I didn’t dare talk to anyone about, and it grew throughout the years. It was filled with deeply embarrassing things that I did, times that I hurt someone I loved for selfish reasons, and secret repulsive behaviors I engaged in.

All of these shameful things were real weights in my life, they were extremely present and significant in my mind, yet totally absent in my words and confessions. My reality was therefore twisted around things that were genuine, but treated as if they weren’t, and that twisting caused me all manner of anxiety and misery.

In the moment my conundrum seemed so incredibly complicated, yet the solution to it was ridiculously simple. If my crushing shame was all of the things that I couldn’t speak, then all I had to do was speak them aloud and they would cease to be shame, by definition. After twenty years I did eventually start divulging the things I had refused to talk about, and the relief and release that I experienced took me entirely by surprise. Only in hindsight has the logic of what transpired in those moments of confession revealed itself to me. I confessed not knowing the significance of what I was doing, but I received the full benefits of it regardless. I was speaking the unspeakable, so the shameful became unashamed.

If you have any things in your own life that are unspeakable, I urge you to look for the person and place where you can start to confess your guilt and shame. I wouldn’t say to divulge those things to just anyone, Jesus did teach us not to “cast our pearls before swine,” after all. But I would hope that you could find at least one trusted minister, or well-meaning friend, or recovery group of similarly-burdened individuals. Just find anyone who can receive that confession and offer you peace and wholeness in return. I can tell you that in my own life nothing else has given me as much healing and change of heart as this, and I pray it may be the same for you, too.