“I want to praise you without restraint, but my joy has not yet been released. Why, God, Why?” Tears, the only evidence of release, flowed free and full like the words of her longing. “I sense my joy, deep down. What is keeping it there?”
Beside her, two godly women prayed. “Try coming to joy like a child by singing a simple song of Jesus.” They suggested. Is it even possible to think about coming to joy and at the same instant experience joy? She wasn’t sure. All she knew, as she left the meeting early, was that the women’s prayers were doing God’s work. They had tapped into a deep place.
Out of that place echoed a quiet voice from years before: “God never turns shame into anger. God always turns shame into joy.”
God, after all these years of healing, is there still some leftover shame? You know my heart, Lord. You know what I need.
She fell into bed emotionally exhausted only to wake throughout the night. Each time she woke she was aware of God’s healing presence working within her, as though gentle hands were massaging and pressing far beneath the surface. She felt them. Drifting in and out of sleep, she dreamed:
Dirty water squished out between the rollers on an old wringer washer. Rollers pressed clothing into a tub for rinse. It was as though she were back in childhood, and with a sense of danger, her small hands guided the clothes, helping Momma. She was excited by the challenge. Clothing must be wrung smoothly. They couldn’t be bunched. Not too much could be fed through the turning rollers; only enough so she could gingerly catch and tug the laundry steadily through. All the while dirty water squished from the squashed clothes.
She woke remembering a release bar for safety, just in case her small fingers or arm rolled with the laundry into its pressing, wringing mouth. She remembered Momma’s help with no harm done. She woke, aware of a divine Presence, aware of hands pressing, gently pressing within.
She slept. The clothes in the wringer washer rolled on, leaving the dirty water behind. She woke to the inner press of healing. Lying in the darkness, she sensed that this pressing was squeezing out the last traces of the shame of her life’s dirty water; even the remnants of the sewer water from choices not her own.
She slept and dreamed of lines hung with clothes and sheets billowing, filling with air fresh with the scent of sunshine.
She woke to memories of earlier bedtimes when she buried her joyful face into those sun scented sheets and drew in deep breaths of nature’s fragrance. She remembered drying with towels stiffened by the wind. Their roughness, so unlike soft, dryer-dried towels, had stimulated her skin. For years she had chosen not to own a dryer.
She slept and when she woke again, anticipation coursed her being. It was an anticipation for the joy that she knew was set before her. Throughout the night, at a subconscious level, her shame had been despised and wrung out like so much dirty water. Shame was gone. Joy and unrestrained praise would come.
With sunlight brightening her bed, she reached for her Bible and listened to her Father speak:
“Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion. Instead of dishonor you shall rejoice in your lot. Therefore in your land you shall possess a double portion. You shall have everlasting joy. For I the Lord love justice.” Is 61:7
We all long for joy. Shame kills it. Jesus endured the cross. He despised its shame knowing there was joy set before him. (Heb. 12:2) When we sense our joy is lacking, we need more of him! We need to claim the truth that he did not come to condemn but to heal. (John 3:17) When we choose to believe that Jesus gives us the right to become children of God (John 1:12) and let him press that truth deep within us, our shame disappears. Whenever we gain a deeper sense of the stain and effect of our sin or as shame raises its ugly head in the words or actions of those who do not love us or our God, we need the truth that Jesus declares.
We each need him to wash us clean and to wring away all the dirty water of shame. We need to allow the wind to fill our billows with the fragrance of his sunshine! As life slings its mud our way, we need to be released and refilled again and again. If we do not wrangle with the wringer, we will be pressed down only to fly against the sky on his wind, filled with his love, his fragrance, and his joy.
“Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” Romans 10:11
“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.” John 15:11
Release your own shame to the Savior as you listen to Julie True sing “Beautiful Tapestry and I Release.”
Story contributed by JerryAnn Berry. Written by Merita Atherly Engen
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