Spiritual (De)Formation
From Shame to Embrace
I thought studying spiritual formation would save me. Instead, it broke me open.
What began as a dissertation became a dismantling—and eventually, a doorway to a radically different way of understanding myself and my place in the world. A journey from shame to embrace: not as self-help, but as sacred rebellion. The collapse of my spiritual persona made room for something more honest as divine love stopped being a reward for performance and became the birthright I’d forgotten. If you’ve ever felt like your worth was something to earn, this one’s for you.
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The Full Story
August 2015. The cursor pulsed against white emptiness—a digital heartbeat mocking my spiritual flatline.
I was a theology student staring into the void of my dissertation on spiritual formation, and the irony crushed me. I had nothing to say. After a public breakdown that shattered my religious persona, I had returned to school, hoping not just education but a deep dive into the trenches of soul formation might be part of a path to restoration. That in the deeps I would find something that, up to this point had escaped me. But here I was—my résumé gathering credentials while my soul still harbored emptiness, realizing that the theology I clung to, the way I’d come to understand who God is and who I am, could never give me the life I truly longed for.
What does it say about our religious systems when those most qualified to speak about transformation are often the most untransformed?
This isn't just my story—it's an invitation to witness what happens when the scaffolding of religious performance collapses and something more honest emerges from the rubble.
THE ANATOMY OF SHAME
Shame is the shadow that falls between who we are and who we think we should be.
It's not just an emotion—it's an identity thief, a cosmic pickpocket that steals your birthright of belonging while convincing you that the emptiness is evidence of your unworthiness.
Guilt whispers, "You crossed a line." Shame declares, "You are the line that shouldn't be crossed."
One can be resolved; the other can only be dissolved—not through striving but through a more radical embrace.
THE CARTOGRAPHY OF SHAME
My shame wore religious garments, but it speaks many languages:
It echoes through corporate hallways where accomplishments evaporate like morning dew, leaving only the perpetual thirst for validation.
It lurks in lovers' quarrels where "you made a mistake" morphs into "you are the mistake" before either realizes the alchemy of accusation.
It haunts creative spirits who crucify first drafts against the finished masterpieces of others, not recognizing that all art begins as beautiful mess.
It shadows parents who measure today's exhausted patience against yesterday's Pinterest promises.
It whispers to bodies navigating illness that somehow their suffering indicts rather than simply describes.
It tells those on society's margins that their very existence requires justification, as if being human were insufficient credential for belonging.
And our digital age? It's a magnificent shame amplifier—algorithms monetizing our most tender inadequacies, turning insecurity into quarterly profits.
THE UNEXPECTED LIBERATION
My deliverance came not through achievement but through surrender—not at the summit of spiritual accomplishment but in the valley of acknowledged emptiness.
In this emptiness, I confronted a painful truth: I was living two lives … the attempted public persona as a spiritual guide and the private spiritual fraud. The dissonance wasn't sustainable. Something had to break. It was me.
The breakthrough arrived disguised as breakdown. With nothing left to lose, I approached ancient texts with new eyes. I wasn't asking "What must I do to be worthy?" Instead, I asked "What does Jesus reveal about who God is?" This simple shift in perspective changed everything about how I read the text.
What emerged was an answer I hadn't even considered possible—that Jesus reveals God not as the source of our shame, but as its first and most passionate opponent. God started to look less like me and more like Jesus, and after decades of insisting that Jesus came to change God's mind about me, I began to believe that Jesus might've come to change the way that I think about God.
The text itself began to transform how I read it. As I allowed this revelation to take hold, the idea unfolded like a flower before my eyes—divine love is not earned through performance, nor is it granted through the cycle of sin-confess-repeat, nor is there any other magical access to it. Instead, I discovered divine love flows as the birthright of every human.
In this radically different reading, grace isn't about God overlooking our shadows but illuminating them with such brilliant acceptance that they're transformed into unexpected teachers.
This personal revelation extends far beyond my individual experience. This isn't just theology—it's soul architecture, rebuilding the internal structures that determine how we move through the world.
THE POETICS OF EMBRACE
Embrace isn't mere acceptance. It's not the halfhearted side-hug of tolerance or the condescending pat of permission.
Embrace is the recognition that your existence is a gift, not a problem to be solved.
It's the understanding that your fractures and fault lines aren't design flaws but growth rings—evidence of a life fully weathered.
It's the revelation that integration, not perfection, is the path to wholeness—bringing every fragment of yourself to the table of belonging.
It's the paradoxical discovery that we are simultaneously works in progress and already complete—both becoming and being.
Embrace is love that makes no demands, asks no questions, requires no credentials—given first to yourself and then overflowing to others.
THE ALCHEMY OF TRANSFORMATION
When shame's iron grip loosens, something miraculous happens—not with thunder and lightning but with the quiet persistence of dawn overtaking darkness.
Like a frozen river in spring, the thaw begins at the edges—almost imperceptible until suddenly the whole landscape is running with new life.
For me, it looked like this:
Trading numbing rituals for awakening ones—bare feet on morning earth, the alchemy of water transformed to coffee, the simple miracle of breath exchanging old air for new.
Facing life's brutal liturgy—my dad's death to cancer's cruel communion, job loss's empty collection plate, and injury's unwanted anointing, all compressed into a devastating 2½ month period—without fracturing into familiar fragments.
Teaching my teenager to drive without transferring my anxiety into their hands on the wheel—my presence becoming sanctuary rather than surveillance.
This isn't perfection—it's participation. Not arriving but attending. Not controlling but abiding. Not achieving wholeness but accepting it.
THE REVOLUTION OF STAYING HUMAN
But this pilgrimage from shame to embrace isn't merely personal healing—it's radical resistance in a world determined to commodify our humanity.
When algorithms reduce complex souls to predictable patterns, embrace insists on the mystery at our core.
When efficiency demands we compartmentalize, embrace gathers all our pieces into sacred wholeness.
When consumer culture assigns numeric value to human worth, embrace declares us immeasurable.
This is why shame isn't just uncomfortable but dangerous—it alienates us from our own humanity at the precise moment history is asking us to reclaim it.
This isn't just self-care. It's a quiet revolution, a gentle insurrection against forces that would diminish the holy mystery of being human.
Each embrace practice—whether breath prayer, walking meditation, or deeper reimagining—
THE CHOREOGRAPHY OF PRACTICE
This journey isn't abstract philosophy—it's embodied choreography, a dance of small movements that gradually reorient us toward what has always been true.
The Breath Prayer (for the overwhelmed)
For those drowning in busyness, I offer you a moment of reclamation, a breath prayer:
Place your palm against your heartbeat—skin to skin, pulse to pulse.
Inhale this truth: "Even this version of me..."
Exhale completion: "...is worthy of love."
Feel how these words land in your body—notice resistance without judgment.
Let this minute become a doorway between worlds—the world of proving and the world of being.
Set a daily chime—not as taskmaster but as invitation.
Watch how, like water on stone, gentle persistence reshapes what once seemed solid.
The Walking Meditation (for those with margin)
If life blesses you with a bit more margin, then I invite you to a time of resistance through a walking meditation:
Step outside without destination—an act of revolutionary purposelessness.
Let your senses become anchors to the present—five sights that catch your eye, four textures beneath your fingers, three sounds that arrive unbidden, two scents that tell stories, one taste that connects you to your own hunger.
When shame's familiar voice begins its sermon, name it: "That's not truth speaking—that's shame."
Replace monologue with dialogue: "I am held by something greater than my thoughts."
Keep a constellation journal—connecting moments of belonging like stars forming new patterns in the night sky.
The Sacred Reimagining (for those called deeper)
If you feel rebellion calling, then my invitation to you is one of sacred reimagining:
Create a cartography of your shame—mapping its sources, languages, and hidden pathways.
For each shame story, write a counter-narrative rooted not in defense but in deeper truth.
Establish a daily contemplative practice—not as self-improvement but as self-remembering.
Curate community that mirrors back your worthiness when you've temporarily misplaced it.
Before each action, ask: "Am I moving from fear or toward love?"
Consider therapeutic companionship specifically attuned to shame's particular gravity.
THE INVITATION
So I ask you—not as expert but as fellow traveler—which doorway calls to you today? The breath prayer? The walking meditation? The deeper reimagining?
Your answer matters because you matter—not for what your hands produce or your mind conceives, but for the irreplaceable miracle of your existence.
The embrace isn't something you achieve—it's something you receive. It's waiting. Right now. Just as you are.
And receiving it might be the most important way We Can Stay Human.