“It seems to me that women typically experience shame about two things: their bodies and their homes.”
-Shauna Niequist, Bread and Wine: Finding Community and Life Round the Table

True. True. True.

My body and general self-respect and how I feel about them lined up with the state of my home seem to be intimately connected. Lately, when I feel out of control and chaotic it produces negative behaviors that produce shame and it seeps into my habitat. This is so dangerous because it can ricochet back and fourth between the two, causing more depression and guilt that can be hard to climb out of.
I think the reason why we experience shame in these two areas is because these are the areas in which we try to seek out our identity. In our culture, appearances both as a woman physically and in our living spaces say something about us. Causing us to be inviting or closed off.

She says in the book, “This [shame] is why the door stays closed for so many of us, literally and figuratively.”

There are so many traps and myths woven into our minds when it comes to these things. We have been so deceived. Finding our worth in the wrong things. Measuring ourselves in the wrong arena.

I am not my dirty dishes.
I am not my stained carpets or dusty blinds.
I am not my piles of laundry or cluttered counter tops that don’t shine.
I am not a To-Do list undone.
I am not my cluttered brain.
I am not my jumbled heart breaking under the weight of shame.
I am not my heavy body.
I am not my double chin.
I am not these jeans that don’t fit anymore because I can’t bear to face a gym.
I am not these things I HAVE …
the truth is I’m so much MORE.
May I truly believe it to live with wide open doors.

Jesus says, “Make your home in me, as I make mine in you” (John 15:4). I think if we let the truth of this become our REAL standard it might cause all else to vanish. Thinking so much lately about what it means to come to the table, to offer myself in hospitality and fellowship, to dine with Jesus as my friend…so much to discuss. Much more on this topic for sure.