Shame was a language I learned early, right along with how to say “please” and “thank you.” There was an unspoken etiquette we learned growing up in the Deep South. The tea should be sweet, the chicken friend. And you should address people older than you as “ma’am” and “sir.”
I knew the taste of collard greens and banana pudding, and the proper use of the phrase, “bless her heart” to camouflage your disdain for someone. We were known for our hospitality and kindness. We were always polite and proper—to people’s faces. Appearances mattered, often more than anything else.
I spent much of my childhood lulled into summer evening bliss by the rhythmic rocking of wooden chairs and the tinkle of the wind chimes hanging over a long porch. My sister and I spent days down by the creek, running as fast as we could past our grandpa’s beehives. Our hands were stained from the dirt and black muscadine juice, calloused from shelling peas and stirring pots of beans.
But during those lazy afternoons on the porch, the stories flowed like molasses, sweet and sticky in the summer sun. Oh, that girl down the road who got married a little young. We all knew why. That aunt had a liking for the bottle, everyone said. Shh, don’t say it too loud, someone might hear you.
If you stepped outside the cultural expectations, you would be the talk of the town. One thing I never learned in those early days was the language of grace. We were never taught to talk about all our failings or about the healing we can find when we say it out loud. We didn’t know what life could be like when we admitted our anxiety and asked for help. We learned to sweep the dark corners of our lives under the rug, afraid someone would find out and whisper about us, too.
It was never said explicitly but the implications were clear. Don’t let people see your weaknesses. Manners matter more than transparency. And, for goodness’ sake, keep up appearances.
When I started attending church in my teens, I wrapped a new layer of right actions around me like a bullet-proof vest. I knew what to say and do (and what and who to avoid), to appear like the best Christian. We talked about a personal relationship with Christ, but what I gained was another set of standards I needed to uphold.
Years later, after living in a way that certainly made me the talk of all the good folks I knew in my church days, I longed for Jesus, but I wasn’t so sure about his people. I was hungry for someone who could offer me more than appearances and I’d never found that in church before.
I’ll never forget the kind people who poured into hurting students in the college ministry where I finally discovered a different dialect. They replaced the language of failure, shame, and secrecy with words like vulnerability, lament, mercy, and restoration. This was a lesson in hope that changed everything for me and returned me to the Body of Christ I loved so dearly.
The deeply ingrained feelings of fear that I’m never enough haven’t just disappeared though. Those lessons in shame are difficult to counteract. All these years later, when I even consider people may be negatively talking about me, I can feel my face flush and my pulse race. I know the way it works here (and maybe everywhere). I know how people you think are near to you will smile when you’re in the room and gossip about you on their porches.
Yet, I am ever learning a new way from the teachers God is gracing me with. I was on a walk with a dear friend the other day, one who knows my propensity to earn my way into people’s good favor. I had just spent a week helping him and his husband through a busy sequence of family events, ever eager to pitch in to prepare a meal or clean up. He asked if I was staying busy, doing all those things, to feel like I was enough around their families.
I answered with a resounding “no” right away. Anything I’d done over the last week flowed out of love and security. This beautiful friendship has helped heal old wounds, and shown me what it means to be accepted just as I am. I know in their presence I am seen for all I am, and I don’t need to work to keep up appearances. Knowing them has helped teach me the language of love in recent days.
When the old language of fear rears its ugly head in my psyche, I am now able to pull myself back most days. I hold onto the perfect love that casts out all fear I've learned in quiet moments of contemplation, grounded by the years of praying with the centering word “beloved” to anchor me back to the first language I knew before I was taught otherwise.
“Your identity comes not from what you do, but from who you are in God,” I remind myself with the words of the author, Michelle Derusha. “Once you understand at the core of your being that you are truly God's beloved - delighted in and cherished by God - everything else falls into place.”
When I forget these lessons, I sit in the resounding silence of Christ’s presence. I light a candle and am silent before my altar. There is no pretense there and I find strength in the silence that speaks louder than words.
Still, I’m a Georgia girl at heart and there’s not much I love more than porch sitting—when the conversation is real. After our walk, I sit in a rocking chair with my friends on their porch, the sangria and bay breeze blowing away the memory of facades we force ourselves to wear to please others. We talk about the real things of life beyond family drama and issues swept under the rug. And we speak in our mother tongue, the one we knew before there were words of shame—the one that is nothing but love.
*Originally published June 16, 2020 at The Mudroom. Updated and republished on August 17, 2024.
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