Thinking - is it too early to add some Kahlua, soy creamer and sugar to a Grande Starbucks coffee? Um, no I don't think it is - I'll be back, never mind too much work, it's too cold outside - and I have errands to run downtown today so I'll get my coffee then sans the Suburban housewife life essential. In the past I've blogged about Tenth and the impact it's had on my life and I've always looked back at the posts and wondered if I should have said it - if there is a way to really articulate the change I walk away with, so I decided after last night, to let it all sink in before I decided if I was going to write a blog or not. The funny thing is I'm not sure how to get it all out. Here it goes.
Ken is starting a series on Romans 8, covering verses 1-4 last night - specifically covering the issue of guilt and shame - two different though often overlapped concepts/feelings. Guilt is the personal response to breaking a moral, ethical or legal code. Shame however is feeling bad about who we are, and it maybe in response to something we have/haven't done and it maybe something done to us. As he was talking there was the previous issue for which I have felt guilt and shame - a bizarre combination given the circumstances. But I wasn't acutely cognisant that there was another burden I had been lugging around with me, medical school, as Sara counts the days to her official status I've spent more time throwing away the remnants of what was to be - the hours, caffeine and money contributed to the dream and I failed - my inheritance money from my Opa went to my Kaplan class and I bombed the MCAT - I had not 8 months prior skipped his funeral because it was on the same day as my two lab finals. I missed countless holidays, spent nights praying and hoping and all the while everyone knew that it is what I wanted - Medical school and Jenn became synonymous - one in the same and the later nothing without the former. So since the day I saw that 25 on the screen, knowing that you needed at minimum a 30 for an interview, I felt broken, shattered down to the core, and yet there was no core - I was medical school, that was my life, there was no Plan B, there never needed to be, never considered and never supported by my family. I had grown up in the shadow of my father's Biology/Biochemistry degree, awarded the month I was born, He lost out on medical school and it seemed that as much as I desired it, I desired it more for him - that we both could complete it together somehow. Shame is what I felt and have been feeling - that I was/am unsuccessful at than and now I'm still more or less unsuccessful and to my parents horror I'm looking at a life of minimal income and no clear "accomplishment."
Last night Ken asked us to stand if we had guilt/shame about an aspect in our life - I have already place the other issue before God - and am healing slowly, but I hadn't realized until that moment that I needed to officially dealt with the medical school issue in that way. So I stood, I stood to not only deal with the shame of the past but to be able to in some way be ready to embrace my future whatever it may be.
1 comment:
Wow, thanks for sharing Jenn.
I too feel guilt and shame surrounding certain circumstances that I undertook many years ago, and while I know my parents don't blame me for it, I do feel a sense of responsibility and guilt for what happened.
Don't worry girl, you ain't alone.
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