Being alive means not being perfect.

Recently I have been taking notice to shame.  Shame is the feeling of "because I made a wrong choice therefore I am bad" not "the choice I made was bad".  The difference is what keeps us from making connections with one another.  Think about it when you have had a difficult situation or you simply have had a tough week and you mention it to another person some of the responses you may have received are what I call one upping "You think you have it bad I have to deal with..." or "at least you get that much I don't even get that" another response may be the bypass response where one completely ignores the pain you are voicing by only acknowledging your words, they may do this by saying "In the scriptures we are told to trust God and then we will be happy".  For me these two responses are both painful and shaming, in both cases I am told that I am doing something wrong because I am feeling pain or because life is tough for me therefore I am either not counting my blessings or I am being weak.

Monday night I was talking with a close friend who reminded me that we live in an imperfect world and we are imperfect beings and this is the whole purpose behind Heavenly Father sending Jesus Christ to be our SAVIOR and REDEEMER.  The Atonement is purely because we will hurt and we will make unwise choices and others will do hurtful and harmful things to us.  God knew life would be a tough one.  


Personally I am one of those people that no matter how hard I try (and believe me I try really really hard) to do everything perfectly with no mistakes I continually come up short and of course making bad choices, so it took some weight off of my shoulders and felt nice to be reminded that the Savior already suffered my pain and my mistakes and not all is lost when I make a poor choice.  I don't need to feel that there is no longer hope for me and that I have ruined my kids life forever because I wasn't patient with them or patient with myself.  Even though I feel a lot of pressure to be perfect I am not.  Daily I make mistakes and daily I need forgiveness from the ones I love the most.  I know that a lot of the shame I feel comes from growing up in a home that I was never allowed to have feelings or feel pain, I was also not allowed to make mistakes and I saw my mom beat herself up because she didn't feel good enough.  These are the things that I strive to overcome everyday because this is a pain I don't ever want my children to struggle with.  I want to do better at listening to and feeling the pain or fear one is trying to share and allow myself to sit in their darkness with them.  I know that I feel good when others are willing to do that with me.  We can have shame resilience when we see ourselves in other's pain, we may not have had the same experience but we have all probably felt fear or the feeling like we didn't measure up or we just weren't good enough.  When I feel uncomfortable or sad or painful feelings it feels good when I know that I am not alone or that I am not being looked at by others outside of my glass box as they stare in at me.  


I am going to continue to practice shame resilience by sitting in people's poop with them because I know the world will be a better place full of more love if there is less shame.