What Would I Achieve If I Wasn't Afraid
When shame settles in the body and God keeps calling you to dance
📖📖 "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love."
🕯️ It was a Sunday morning at Catch the Fire, and I was sitting quietly in my seat, waiting for worship to begin, when the lady who usually dances during the services came up behind me and wrapped me in a hug. I hadn't met her before but she leaned close and whispered in my ear: "I hope you come dance today. I saw you here yesterday and felt the Lord tell me to encourage you."
Something in me softened at that — a small, quiet unlocking.
✍️ When worship started, I stepped out and danced in the aisle the way I always do, feeling the weight of His presence settle around me as I moved. A few steps forward. Just a few. Then, as I inched a little further, a word came — not from outside, but from somewhere deep within — "fake." Immediately, my shoes felt like lead. I couldn't move. I stood there, held in place not by worship, not by wonder, but by something older and heavier than both.
I want to sit with that for a moment. Not to analyse it to death, but to honour what it revealed — that there's still a place in me that hears my own stepping forward and whispers: you don't belong out there.
🕊️ The sermon that morning was titled "Following Failure" — and it struck something I didn't know was so close to the surface. That word, failure. For those of us who've felt it — not just occasionally, but as a kind of companion, a shadow that follows us into the ordinary moments as much as the significant ones. I didn't stay for prayer afterwards. I felt too ashamed. I rushed home instead, wrestling with tears that kept threatening to overflow.
On the way home, Clive messaged to ask me to pick up burgers. In all the back-and-forth, I'd already driven past Burger King and Wendy's — so I had to turn around, and that small thing just added to the agitation already simmering in me. It's funny how the ordinary irritations find their way into the cracks that have already been opened.
🪨 Later that afternoon, we had our monthly Elijah House North Shore gathering with Peter. If the day hadn't already been layered enough, he played the second C-school lesson on shame — the very one we had watched the week before last in our encounter group. It was as though the Lord had arranged the day like a syllabus, each hour building on the last.
Sandra spoke about shame in a way that landed deep. She described how internalised shame doesn't stay in the mind — it settles into the body. It can form the very core of a child's character and identity: worthlessness, failing, falling short as a human being. Then it finds a home in the gut — indigestion, the stomach, the colon, the reproductive system, the bowels, the immune system. So many of those places are ones I've had issues with over the years. Hearing that didn't frighten me. It illuminated something. Like a lamp held up in a cellar I'd been avoiding.
📖 "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." — Psalm 139:23–24 (NKJV)
🌱 I wonder sometimes what I would achieve if I wasn't afraid. Not in a striving way — not reaching for ambition or applause — but in the quiet, honest sense of: what would it look like to move forward without the weight of lead in my boots?🤔 What would it feel like to step out the aisle to dance without that inner voice whispering fake?🤔 What would I risk?🤔 What would I offer?🤔 What would I receive?🤔
The Lord isn't finished with this thread. I can feel it. The sermon, the lesson, Sandra's words, the boots like lead — they're all pointing to the same root, the same tender place He keeps returning to. Not to condemn it, but to heal it. Not to expose me, but to gently bring light into the cellar.
🕯️ Shame is a quiet thief. It doesn't always announce itself with drama — sometimes it simply adds weight to your boots and whispers fake at the very moment you dare to step forward. It plants itself in the body long before the mind catches on. It speaks in the voice of old wounds and settles in the places where we've already been weakened.
Yet the Potter doesn't discard the cracked vessel. He reaches for the gold.
✍️ Kintsugi — that ancient Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold — has become one of the most sacred images in my healing journey. The breakage isn't hidden. It's honoured. The cracks become the most beautiful part of the piece, because they are the very places where gold has been poured in. I am learning — slowly, still — that my fractures are not evidence of failure. They are the geography of a life being redeemed.
🌱 I am still learning to let Him in. Still learning to hold still long enough for the gold to set.
🕯️ Whatever this day stirred in you — let it be an invitation, not a verdict. God doesn't expose our wounds to shame us; He surfaces them to heal them. The same Lord who arranged your Sunday like a syllabus is the One who holds the gold. You are not too broken, not too late, not too far from the aisle. Step forward, beloved — even with heavy boots. He meets you there.
- When you heard the word "fake" in that moment, where did you feel it in your body — and whose voice did it most sound like? 🤔
- Where else in your life has shame kept your boots feeling like lead, holding you back just as you were beginning to move forward? 🤔
- In what ways has shame settled in your body — and what might it look like to invite God's healing into those very places? 🤔
- What would you attempt, offer, or risk if the voice of shame were silenced by the voice of perfect love? 🤔
- Where is the Lord gently holding a lamp up in a cellar of your heart that you've been avoiding — and are you willing to let Him in? 🤔
I am not defined by the weight in my boots or the voice that whispers fake. I am a vessel in the Potter's hands — cracked, yes, but being mended with gold. Shame does not have the final word over my story. God does. I belong in the aisle. I belong in the dance. I belong in His presence — fully, freely, and without apology. Perfect love is casting out fear, one gentle step at a time.
Lord, You saw me standing still in that aisle — boots heavy, heart heavier. You saw the word that held me in place, and You knew its name long before I did. I bring You the shame that has settled in my body, in my bones, in the places I've tried not to look. I invite You into every cracked and tender place — into the gut, into the gut-deep places of worthlessness and fear of falling short. Pour Your gold there, Lord. Mend what was broken. Redeem what shame tried to steal. Teach me to step forward again — not in striving, not in performance, but in the quiet confidence of a daughter who is deeply loved. Let the voice of perfect love grow louder than every whisper of fake. Let my dancing be worship, not performance. Let my moving forward be faith, not foolishness. I trust You with the thread You're still pulling. I trust You with the cellar You're still illuminating. Lead me gently — in the way everlasting. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
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