Will You Leave a Legacy of Pain or Freedom?

She was beautiful. She was ruthless. She was holy. She was broken.

Three weeks ago I flew to Indianapolis to attend a conference called “The Healing Leader Roundtable”. It was close to my hometown so I planned a few extra days to visit and reconnect with family, including my 97 year old grandmother who had been in and out of hospice care for the last year. Every time I went back home, I would visit her and say goodbye for the last time, or so I thought. But grandmother was a fighter, a survivor of the strongest kind. I remember thinking while on the plane as I flew to Indiana that it would be great if she passed into the arms of Jesus while I was there. She was ready. We were ready. I was ready. 

My mom, cousin and I were already planning to visit my grandmother on Wednesday when we got a call on Tuesday night that she had fallen and likely wouldn’t last much longer. Although they said that she wasn’t coherent anymore, we decided to go anyway. After the initial shock of what she looked like so close to death, we followed my gracious cousin’s lead in making the moments as normal as possible. We sat and sorted through pictures and precious trinkets, all the while talking to her like she was going to sit up and chat with us. It ended up being a beautiful goodbye for us all and a closure I know each of us needed in our own way. She passed the next morning. It was just as the Lord had planned.

I am sad writing this today but not because of what you might think. I am grateful for my grandmother and, of course, I rejoice knowing the prayer warrior that she was and that she is with Jesus, where all her tears are washed away. But I also grieve because, while she left a legacy of faith, she also left a trail of deep wounds and brokenness. And all because of her own unhealed shame that led to distorted images of God, herself, and others.

The things we hide, the things we won’t let go of will likely be our legacy if we don’t give up our shame and all that comes with it.

This has left me thinking, after all is said and done, who will we be? What will be known about us and said about us? Will we try to hide our hurt so much that we bring brokenness and pain to others? Or will we lay down our selfish, self-protecting hearts to heal and help others heal?

In my own journey toward wholeness, I remember the jarring moment that I realized I had fooled myself into believing that I was good, that I was a good mother, a good daughter, a good wife, a good person. But I wasn’t truly good. I was incapable of being “good” without God’s goodness. (Even the word “good” strikes me as such a trap…how “good” is good enough? I’m only using the word here because I think you will relate.) That moment, sitting at a dining table alone, coming to Him, so broken about my failures, especially my failures with my children, was visceral. It was physically painful, spiritually agonizing and emotionally excruciating. I’ve never felt so undone. It felt like looking into a black hole and I feared that once I accepted my “badness”, I would fall in and be swallowed up by it. But I discovered that was the biggest lie of all.

I learned this self-righteousness from my family growing up. From a very young age, I thought that to survive in this world one needed to be perfect. Perfectionism wasn’t just an annoying quirk, it was a way of life. As a result, no one was allowed to admit to something bad they had done and know acceptance. We were taught to cover our wounds and our sins by talking about Jesus and by making sure we acted like “good Christians” regardless of what was going on in our hearts or behind closed doors. 

In a nutshell, my grandmother allowed shame and fear to rule her life and she responded by trying to control those around her.

It wasn’t until I leaned into the truth and I saw my ugly self-righteousness that I could then feel His unnerving, unconditional love for me! All of my fake righteousness had created this crusty wall between His love for me and my own brokenness that I couldn’t see or feel it until my false self was painfully crumbling. But this crumbling, this unraveling, was what was painful, not His beautiful heart that was waiting on the other side of that pain. His unconditional love had been there all the time but He knew that I couldn’t fully know Him with that wall between us. 

That was February 2011 in Fort Worth, Texas and it was the beginning of this new life of learning to live inside His heart. He was in me all along, growing me, teaching me, holding me. But something happened that day that began to free me from the bondage of self-righteousness, religion and perfectionism. Many times since, He has been there to get me back inside of His love and help me to let go of the things I can easily use to protect my heart, even when I’ve made the mess myself. He is THAT GOOD. I  don’t have to turn away, create another narrative, or try to blame others. I can face the truth because I’m never alone.

My grandmother’s life was marked by unprocessed and unhealed wounds that resulted in her striving to act and look perfect. I think she believed she had to be someone she wasn’t so that God wouldn’t leave her, like her father did. That she had to make up for her sins instead of leaving them forgiven and forgotten at the cross. That she had to hold onto Him instead of trusting that He was actually holding on to her all along. In a nutshell, my grandmother allowed shame and fear to rule her life and she responded by trying to control those around her. 

It wasn’t until I leaned into the truth and I saw my ugly self-righteousness that I could then feel His unnerving, unconditional love for me! ...His heart had been there all the time but He knew that I couldn’t fully know Him with that wall between us. 

When I look back on the sum of her life and the things that she had a hand in, I believe if she had had a moment, like mine, at that dining table, if she had seen all the suffering she had caused and leaned into the ugly truth of that, I would be telling you a very different story today.

Can you just imagine how different her life might have been - how different her children’s and grandchildren’s lives might have been - if she had laid down her weapons and surrendered fully to the heart of the Father? If she had let His perfect love into the darkest parts of her soul and let Him heal her? Can you imagine? 

So I’ll ask again: After all is said and done, who will we be? What will be known about us and said about us? 

The things we hide, the things we won’t let go of will likely be our legacy if we don’t give up our shame and all that comes with it. Let’s lay that all down so we can begin healing and be an example to those around us of the power and hope and goodness of living in the perfect, loving heart of God. 

Can you imagine if you did that? How many people would be transformed? Who would be begging you to meet your beautiful Father? Does your life display the goodness of God in this way? If not, let’s do this together! It’s even better than you can imagine.