How Any of Your Shame Doesn’t Get to Be the End of Your Story

Some wounds happen in a moment. Others are carried for years. We learn to survive. We keep moving. We smile. But beneath the surface, our hearts are still longing to be made whole. The beautiful news of the Gospel is that Jesus never asks us to hide our scars. He steps into our pain, meets us with grace, and gently leads us toward healing. Today, I’m honored to welcome a friend, pastor, and New Testament scholar whom I deeply esteem, Dr. Derwin L. Gray. In his new book, It’s Time to Heal: Four God-Given Steps to Restore What Life Has Shattered, Derwin weaves together the timeless hope of Scripture, the insights of neuroscience, and the compassionate heart of a shepherd to help us discover that no wound is beyond the restoring love of Christ. I pray this excerpt reminds you that your deepest pain is never deeper than God’s deepest love, and that the scars you carry need not be the end of your story. It’s a joy to welcome Derwin to the farm’s table today…

Guest Post by Derwin Gray

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You can’t begin to imagine what a profound pleasure it was to sit down to talk with Dr. Derwin Gray in the belltower of our 1896 old stone church — this is genuinely a NOT-TO-BE-MISSED-CONVERSATION….  Don’t miss our powerful video convo below…

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As a young girl, Ava was bullied for how she looked.

Cruel words cut deeper than anyone knew, tattooing shame into her soul.

The pain became so overwhelming she switched schools, hoping for relief. But the punishing voices followed her and carved cruel words deep in her mind. The lies echoed louder and louder, wounding her from the inside out. Ava’s self-worth was crushed.

And then at age fourteen, she was sexually assaulted. 

Trauma upon trauma. 

Her self-worth plummeted even more. 

Reframe Your Identity

Trauma, in its Greek origin, means “wound.” Trauma is not just something that happened to you. It is what happens inside you when suffering overwhelms your capacity to cope, leaving echoes in your emotions, in your thinking, and even your body.

Trauma does two devastating things: It makes you feel powerless, and it disconnects you from yourself, from others, and sometimes even from God. Gabor and Daniel Mate write, “Whether we realize it or not, it is our woundedness, or how we cope with it, that dictates much of our behavior, shapes our social habits, and informs our ways of thinking about the world.”

Even though Ava was going to church and wore the outer clothing of religion, she was dying on the inside.

Mental health struggles were a constant battle. She was exhausted from trying to fix herself in her own strength. The harder she tried, the more broken she became. 

“We must hit rock bottom to discover Jesus, the Rock at the bottom.“

Ava’s story isn’t just hers. It’s all of ours.

Because the truth is, we’re all walking wounded.

When we make our wounds our identity, we spend a lot of time trying to manage the wounds alone. This is who I am, we think. I’ve got this under control. Some of us try to heal our shattered self-worth through casual hookups, hoping someone else’s touch will silence the pain. Others numb the agony with drugs, alcohol, long hours at work, or hours lost in a gaming haze. Some of us try to win God’s approval by doing more, serving more, performing more, while secretly knowing we’re falling apart. We just want anything that will help us escape the chaos in our minds and feel some measure of control. Eventually, we all run out of strength. When we reach the end of our self-reliance, Jesus can begin. 

We must hit rock bottom to discover Jesus, the Rock at the bottom.

That’s what happened to Ava. In February of 2024, she entered a Christ-centered residential home for women battling life-controlling struggles. Nine months later, she walked out transformed. Not because her pain vanished overnight but because Jesus met her in the deepest place of her pain and began to reframe her identity from the inside out.

Refocus Your Thoughts

One of the most life-changing graces Ava experienced in the residential home was a simple yet profound practice: creating truth statement cards. Each card carried a verse of Scripture that declared who she is in Christ.

Truths like:

I am loved.

I am chosen.

I am forgiven.

I am God’s child.

I am his temple.

I am his righteousness.

I am redeemed.

I am a new creation.

I am God’s masterpiece.

At first, it felt awkward, just about impossible to speak those healing words over herself. The lies had been loud for so long it was hard to hear and believe God’s promises. But surrounded by the love of the staff and the encouragement of her community, Ava began the holy practice of declaring God’s truth over herself, even when she didn’t believe it. She searched for the Scriptures, and by faith, took hold of the spiritual reality Paul described: We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. 

We use God’s  mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3- 5 NLT).

Ava went to war for her mind and heart with a simple stack of index cards.

On one side, she wrote the lies she had believed for years, lies like “I’m unlovable,” “I’m too damaged,” or “I’m disgusting.” On the other side, she wrote the truth of who she is in Christ, anchored in Scripture: “I am God’s beloved,” and “I am a new creation.” With every card, she was rewriting her story, replacing shame with grace and lies with the healing power of God’s Word.

For the next eight months, she read and prayed through just three of these cards every single day out loud with bold faith. She’d say: “I reject the lie that I am disgusting. I receive the truth that I am God’s masterpiece in Christ. God, thank you that your Word is true. Help me believe it, even when I don’t feel it.”

As Ava faithfully declared these truths, something remarkable began to happen. The Holy Spirit, working through the power of God’s Word, began to rewire her mind. Through the gift of neuroplasticity, new neural pathways were formed, pathways built not on shame but on grace; not on lies but on love.

Rehearse Your Position

Ava describes her transformation like walking on a new trail, on a mountain path. For years, she had walked the same dark road, carved deep by self-hatred and lies. But now, by God’s grace, she stopped going down that old road and started walking a new one.

At first, it was hard and painful. But over time, as days turned into weeks and weeks into months, the new trails became clearer and stronger. The old trail started to be covered over with weeds, slowly fading from view.

Ava now serves on a staff of a Church, helping others find healing. She is a wounded healer.

The pain that was meant to shatter her became the very place God began to shape her.

What was meant to destroy her, God used to deliver her.

From the ashes of her suffering, he raised up a woman of fierce compassion. She recently married a young man who grew up in the ministry of the church she now serves.

“Healing is more than the absence of pain. It’s the presence of something new: God’s heart beating within you.”

The Holy Spirit takes the truth of God, revealed through Jesus, and rewires our minds with grace. New pathways are formed. Old lies lose their power. Our minds become places of peace instead of chaos, strongholds of truth instead of confusion, gardens of mercy instead of shame. But this doesn’t happen by accident. In the Holy Spirit’s power, renewing your mind takes daily intentionality. We must choose daily to take every thought captive and make it obey Christ. Healing begins when our thoughts come under the rule of grace. As my daughter says, “Healing is not linear. Be patient with yourself.”

The pain of the past doesn’t fit your new heart.

Guard your heart because Jesus bled, died, and rose to make it whole. Guard your heart because the Holy Spirit dwells in you. Guard your heart because from it flows the very essence of your life.

Healing is more than the absence of pain. It’s the presence of something new: God’s heart beating within you.

It’s time for you to live from a new script. Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32).

1) To protect her privacy, I did not use her name. 2) Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture (Vintage Canada, 2025), 16. 3)  I believe the late Henry Nouwen coined this term.

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A Deeply Life-Giving Conversation: BellTower Stories

How do you heal without letting your past define your future? Ann Voskamp and Dr. Derwin Gray discuss his new book, It’s Time to Heal. Come join us in BellTower Stories, up in the 1896 bell tower our little Village Table church, as “the bells are the voice of the church, with tones that touch and search.” (Longfellow)

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