He Heals the Brokenhearted

I sat on a panel with two other men who have transitioned from Mormonism to Christianity and are now in Christian vocational work at the Faith After Mormonism Leader’s forum. After we each had answered several questions, we were asked, “What did it cost you to leave Mormonism?”

My entire body felt the weight of his question as I released an involuntary grunt. The man beside me leaned over and shook his head back and forth as he sighed. After some time, my new friend raised his eyes to the audience and exhaled, “Everything. It cost everything.”

I broke into tears as he said the words. It cost everything. And I couldn’t stop crying. My emotions caught me off guard for I began my exodus from Mormonism 29 years ago. It has been a long time since the extremely intense two years following my confession to my parents that I was leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to follow the Jesus I’d met in the shadows. 

I silently cried throughout his offering of how it cost relationships, culture, community, language, comfort, identity, and more to leave the Church. It’s as if that question hit a water main deeply buried within my soul and I struggled to manage the flow bursting from the pressure. He passed me the microphone as he concluded so that I could share. 

“I’ve been triggered.” I choked out of my throat, and passed the microphone to the man on my left. 

When Story opens me wide

Writing my story and offering it to the world has triggered episodes of PTSD which have blindsided me. With each unravelling episode, I’ve sensed Jesus so close, longing to further heal my broken heart and bind up my wounds (Psalm 147:3) St. John of the Cross paints the picture that Jesus enters us through our wounds. These episodes have reminded me that Jesus longs to enter me even more deeply than I could imagine, heal me completely, and enfold me fully in His love from the inside out. 

There were nights after writing my manuscript all day that I was so ramped up with shame I would watch episodes of Suits to escape. When I confessed this to my spiritual director, she said, “I don’t have a problem with you watching Suits, but I’m curious—how do you process shame in your body?” 

Another one of her deep questions I’d never considered. After some moments I exclaimed, “I want to get out of my body, escape it, separate from my body!” As I let this sink in over time, I realized that my reaction to flee my body was the antithesis of how Jesus addressed people as they processed shame in their bodies. 

He touched them with his words, with his hands, with his face—removing their shame and integrating all the parts of them. God tenderly attended to Adam and Eve as he crafted animal skin clothes for them to cover their shame. As Jesus suffered on the cross to defeat the darkness within us and in the world, he took our shame upon Him so that we no longer need to bear it. Shame was crucified in Him.

As I sat on that panel, silently crying, Jesus was moving deeper into my soul, surfacing wounds I didn’t know still needed the light of His touch. Running from the ache feels more natural to my body at times, but it only distances me from the restoration Jesus longs to bring. It took me years to learn to lean into the ache and let my Healer bind up my broken heart with the light of His love.

How do you process shame in your body? Where is Jesus longing to meet you, to heal your broken heart and bind up your wounds?