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Five years ago, my life had gotten so SMALL - I knew I needed help climbing out of the hole I was in but I didn’t really understand what had put me there. I was always anxious and in pain; I felt disconnected from myself and struggled with things that seemed shameful to struggle with.
I just felt STUCK.
On a whim, I went to Freedom Academy. As I was listening to Karrie talk about the concept of shalom and shalom shattered, and it dawned on me: I have been carrying a heavy weight that wasn’t mine for the past thirty years. Things happened in my childhood that had a traumatic effect on how I saw myself and the world around me, and I had never allowed those places in my story to be cared for. This invisible weight was making my day to day life unmanageable, robbing me of shalom.
Shalom is more than just peace. It is living into your original design for belonging, security, and belovedness. Shalom is the GOODNESS that has been intended for you all along. It extends beyond just the absence of conflict and describes a relational reciprocity that is righteous and fulfilling.
The shalom that we were intended for is shattered when sin gives birth to harm and shame is introduced; your relational map for peace and belonging is hijacked. You may not be experiencing big nervous system symptoms like I was, but no one on this earth gets to escape what it means to be harmed in relationally detrimental ways.
What is Shalom Shattered?
For each of us, there is an event, or a series of events, we experienced at a young age that shaped a negative belief about ourselves, our safety, or our sense of belonging. Most likely, we made some internal agreement in order to resist further pain or danger. Mine was: “My pain doesn’t matter,” and “I can’t trust myself.”
Why does this happen? Well, to put it simply, there is an enemy who sees our goodness and our desire for connection, and he truly does seek to destroy that in us.
The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.
John 10:10 (NLT)
How does the shattering affect us? The shame we’ve now taken on divides us from ourselves, making connection with anyone feel untrustworthy or unsafe. We resort to hiding parts of ourselves for survival. This outcome of being isolated in our pain has required our bodies and nervous systems to resort to behavior modification and control in order to keep us safe.
How has this affected you?
Are you able to point to some of the ways that your peace and belonging was shattered in your childhood? Can you identify the moments where sin and shame have attempted to snuff out your goodness?
Do you have an idea of what the agreement is that you made in order to avoid more pain?
If you have the time, sit with this question and see what comes up. Your body might have told you something like:
“I’m only good when I perform well.”
“My big feelings make others avoid me.”
“My pain doesn’t matter.”
or “I can only rely on me.”
It’s a big deal to be curious about this!
Maybe the kindness you need today is just allowing yourself to shed tears over the peace and belonging that was robbed from you at a young age.
Maybe it’s attuning to the ways you’ve struggled to keep the pain hidden and how that’s caused you to miss out on good care and connection.
When our sense of shalom is shattered, we need the safe connection and attunement of others, but we cannot skip over first giving this to ourselves.
Peace to you. Peace to all of us taking the shattering seriously and bringing care to wounded places.
May God bless you richly,
And may you know His love deeply,
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