I had a coworker I adored, but I was deeply intimidated by her. She had been on the field a decade longer than I had and was woven into the fabric of the organization in a way I both admired and longed for. She was extroverted, kind, and assertive, fluent in both Spanish and the language of leadership, with a capacity for work that blew my mind.
She seemed deeply loved, respected, and trusted by leadership and by others. I craved her capacity and confidence most of all. How was she able to do all she could do?
My 30-something-year-old self desperately wanted to be someone who earned that same kind of trust and respect, someone known for their high capacity to serve and who showed up again and again.
The problem was that I’ve never felt deep down that I was designed to run like that. To use an analogy of our pastor’s, I was wired to plod, to put one foot in front of the other intentionally and do things slowly, in a way that savored life.
I wasn’t a sprinter or a hurdler or a triathlete. My natural self was someone who loved to coach, to listen, to teach, to cheer from the sidelines, to notice who needed water or rest and help them keep going. I’ve always been aware of my limits and often tried to ignore them, stretching my capacity in some good ways, but also to the point of breaking.
The place we worked for valued hard work, endless drive, and quiet faithfulness. We honored the people who were forever available and who pushed themselves to their limits without complaining. It was a beautiful place, and I loved it with my whole soul. I still do. I wanted my life to reflect those values in a way that felt faithful, even when my capacity felt less.
For years, I used to joke that in the story of the talents, my friend, my husband, and nearly everyone around me seemed to be the worker with five talents.
But me? I was the two-talent worker.
On top of all of this, one of our daughters has a profound cognitive disability and deals with extreme anxiety. There were many moments when I had to say no to things, not because I lacked desire or commitment, but because she needed me. When her stress levels were too high, her body couldn’t hold it, and she would throw up on the spot.
There were days she threw up right outside the church doors, and days it happened inside, and I would turn around and go home before ministry even began.
Despite it all, I kept trying to make myself be more.
I joined more things, served more people, said yes more often, and kept stretching my capacity, convinced that if I could just catch up, I would finally feel enough. But the standard kept moving.
Then one day, my body shut me down.
I didn’t know what was happening. I just remember suddenly not being able to breathe, panic rising in my chest, fear flooding my body. I was so scared and so ashamed of what was happening that I struggled through it alone and didn’t tell anyone, not even my family.
If they knew I was struggling, they might try to make me stop. But I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t. How humiliating to think I couldn’t handle it.
I tried to ignore it. I pushed it down and kept going. To this day, I don’t remember that first panic attack at all. I only know it happened because a month later, I finally confessed to a friend who had spent decades as a therapist, and she helped me understand what my body had been trying to say.
Not long after that, it happened again. This time I was sitting at the dinner table with my family when I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hide this time. They watched in fear as I gasped for air, completely undone. But still, I didn’t tell anyone on my team. What if they thought I was weak? Incapable? Not enough?
At the time, I didn’t have language for what was happening to me. I only knew that something inside me felt deeply wrong, and that the safest option seemed to be silence. I told myself I just needed to be stronger, more grateful, more faithful.
The language came later, slowly, through continued conversations with my therapist friend, a week of intensive therapy in 2021, and through the long work of earning my master’s in Human Services Counseling. As I began to understand trauma, the nervous system, and shame, I realized I wasn’t weak or failing. My body had been carrying what I refused to name.
What I was experiencing was shame.
When I interviewed Curt Thompson last year, a psychiatrist and author who has worked extensively with missionaries, his words didn’t feel new so much as confirming. He articulated with clarity what I had come to see through my own healing: that shame doesn’t wait for failure. It often attaches itself to good work and lures us into hiding.
He told me, “There’s no good thing we do for which shame is not going to try to attach itself.”
That landed with force because it named what I had lived but never questioned. I wasn’t falling short of the work. Shame was simply feeding on the very things I cared about most.
When I hid, I told myself I was learning to be tough. That I was expanding my capacity, growing, doing the hard inner work of not complaining or being a burden. I told myself this was sacrifice, and sacrifice was faithfulness. This was what missionaries did.
I believed God was my source, that his grace was sufficient, that he wouldn’t give me more than I could handle. So I dug deep, the same way we told others we led to dig deep, never stopping to ask whether what I was calling obedience was slowly training me to disappear.
Hiding cost me connection, and with it the chance to be truly known. It kept me from believing, in any embodied way, that I was loved for who I was and not for what I could produce.
It cost me peace and joy, but it also cost my family more than I wanted to admit. There was a constant, buzzing angst inside me that I couldn’t actually hide, one my husband and daughters could feel even when I tried to keep it contained. It stole my sleep, my ability to rest in my work, and my capacity to celebrate what God was already doing right in front of me.
What began to loosen shame’s grip on me was not more insight or effort, but presence.
I started confessing the dark, spiraling thoughts of shame out loud to a friend, a family member, or a spiritual director I trusted. I stopped keeping them contained in my head, where they always grew louder and more convincing. Sometimes that presence looks like journaling or speaking the truth out loud to God as I pace in prayer around my house.
Naming what is actually happening in me, instead of what I think should be happening, has become a way of choosing light over hiding, again and again.
As Curt Thompson said, the antidote to shame is not more information, but presence. I’ve found that to be true, not as a one-time breakthrough, but as a daily practice.
Shame still shows up. The pull to disappear is still there. But it no longer gets the final word.
From the very beginning, God has been the one who comes looking. In the garden, when Adam and Eve hid in their shame, God did not withdraw. He called out, “Where are you?” Not to condemn them, but to find them. To be present with them, even there.
That question is still being asked, not as an accusation, but as an invitation, spoken by a God who covers us even as he calls us out of hiding.
A Prayer for When I Feel Ashamed
God, I don’t want to be seen.
Like Adam and Eve in the garden, I’m hiding
From you and from everyone else.
I’m embarrassed, ashamed, uncomfortable in my own skin,
Because I’ve been covering it with a costume.
Do I trust you to see what’s underneath?
I know you see it, but I don’t want to acknowledge that you do.
I’ve been pretending, with you and everyone else.
Showing them just enough of the real me
to convince them of my transparency
All the while knowing it’s a farce.
God, I don’t want to be seen.
But also, I desperately do.
Where do I even begin?
What happens when I do?
Fear is mingling with shame and screaming to me, “No!”
Like Gollum with his ring, I’m clinging to my covering,
Thinking it’s what will allow me to live.
But it’s choking the life out of me
Choking your love out of me
Let’s try again.
God, I want to be seen.
See me. Know me. Heal me.
And let it not end here.
Give me the courage to take the risk to be known by others
One safe person at a time.
Show me. Guide me. Protect me.
Today, I am not ready to remove the entire cloak of shame,
But I give you one sock.
You smile and gently take it from me,
Covering what has been exposed
With the warmth of your never-ending love.
If you’d like to watch the interview on shame with Dr. Curt Thompson, you can see it here:
