The Grand Ball

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. Welcome to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Welcome back to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. It's nice to have you back, Cheryl.

It's a blessing to be here. I can't wait for our listeners to hear what we have to share with them today. So if you're new to our series, Barefoot Cinderella's, we are now in our fifth episode as we follow along with Suzy Erickson's new book of the same name. To hear the rest of this series, purchase the book, and read the companion blog, visit salvationarmysoundcast.org slash words of life. Today, Suzy is joined by our friend, Heather Dolby. She and her husband, Rob, have joined us more than once. And to hear more of Heather's powerful testimony, check out an interview we did with the Dolbys in November of last year. We'll have links to those two episodes on our site.

In this episode, chapter four of the book, Suzy talks about how the enemy can use shame to distract us from our purpose. Let us know what you think of this series or share a lesson God has taught you over the years. Send us an email radio at uss.salvationarmy.org or call 1-800-229-9965. We'd love to hear from you.

Welcome. I'm Major Suzy Erickson with the Salvation Army. And today I'm in the studio with Captain Heather Dolby. I first met Heather back, I think in 2016, at an event for women.

And when I saw her speaking, I thought to myself, I need to get to know her because I think that together she and I could change the world. You know, today we're going to talk about a subject that people don't really like to talk about and we don't like to talk about it in the church. And that's the topic of shame. But we see that shame was one of the first emotions that was experienced in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve fell.

And as soon as they took that bite, that first bite of the apple, what did they experience? They experienced shame. Have you experienced a similar shame in your journey? I have spent some time really reflecting on what is the right thing to share here because shame covers over lots of places. I didn't come to know the Lord until I was in my mid-20s, so you can imagine. I lived a lot of life in that time, comfortably wild and free, or so I thought.

And so there were lots of opportunities for shame to enter in. And I do have something that I did want to share about because this is a piece of my story that, for those who know me, might be a bit surprised by. And even though I didn't grow up going to church and doing all the churchy stuff that a lot of kids do, I did come from a house. I do come from a family where the phrase, you'll always have a place to come home to. You can always come home. Like you belong here.

Like that was our family. And in my pre-Jesus days, before I had met Jesus, but I was going to church because that's a thing. There's tons of us that go to church, but have not yet encountered the living Jesus Christ. I had like at least eight years of that, where I attended the Salvation Army in Canada, where I'm from, where I was, again, just welcomed. I had a place where I felt like I belonged. Even though I did not fit in, people made me feel welcome. And my early discipleship, which took place in Vancouver at the 614 Corps and at the War College, again, was just grounded in this belief that there is a place for you. You belong. You are accepted. You're embraced.

You're family. And Rob and I were married in 2005, and we had this unique opportunity in 2006 to come down to the Southern Territory and start a new ministry in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I believe it's a work of the Lord because when we first arrived in 2006, it was the first time I had ever shown up and been myself and not felt welcome.

It was some of the first times in my Jesus journey as a believer that I felt like I didn't fit in. And I believe that the enemy used a few voices and their opinions and their snide comments and the ways that we were led, and he made it seem to me as though that's what everyone thought, right? You could have a hundred people tell you what they love about you and the one person that says, I love when you speak, but it's a shame you speak so fast as a Northerner. We miss half of what you say, and that's all I'm going to remember.

That's right. And so you can imagine even a comment like that given in kindness is difficult. Things that are said that are intentionally unkind or intentionally meant to be harmful, those go deep. I felt and shame whispered, this is not your home. These are not your people.

This is not your culture. You aren't accepted here and you don't belong. Now we knew that we knew that we knew that God had called us, but because those whispers of the enemy speaking shame that who I was and how I loved God and how I loved others, well, there wasn't room for that here.

We were always just going to be outsiders. That went deep, Suzy. Oh, I'm sure. And you know, that's how the enemy works.

And he does that. He uses shame to distract us from what our purpose is. I do have a very different narrative today, all these years later, but it took me a long time to walk out into that truth.

The enemy would love nothing more than to keep us isolated in those moments of shame. I wanted to tell you about this pinnacle moment in my story where God did this beautiful, merciful work of grace and just revealed to me how that shame narrative was informing my ability to be a part of what he's doing here in the Southern Territory. I remember in 2011, we were cadets at the training college and we were coming up to the ordination of the Ambassadors of Holiness. And one of the things that was planned for that weekend was a big musical. It was a huge production. It was so fun to be a part of. So, so many memories. But I remember, it was my first time ever being at a commissioning in the Southern Territory. And it's a big celebration.

Like, you have thousands of people coming to celebrate and to bear witness to the ordination and then the commissioning or the giving of the first church or parsonage to these newly commissioned Salvation Army officers. And I remember it was the Saturday night of that weekend and we had just finished the musical and it was, it was epic. And Rob and I were keenly aware that being from Canada, all of our families in Canada, we had come from a core that once we left, since it was a church plant, it mostly dissolved. There was no one there waiting for us. There were no family members waiting for us in the audience.

There was no folks waiting to take us out for a meal. And so after the musical was over and the meeting was done and we said the benedictions and everyone rushed to get changed and go out to the foyer to meet those that were waiting for them, Rob and I stayed back. We helped clean up. We helped pack up all the equipment.

We helped pack the vans. And we just went home to the training college because we were like, there's not going to be anyone waiting there for us. Because that was the narrative that we don't belong, that there would be no one there. That we don't belong, that there would be nobody there because our eyes couldn't see it and our mind couldn't conceive it. And so we just submitted ourselves that narrative and we didn't even go out to the foyer, even just to see if there was someone that had remembered us that had thought to say, you know what, we're waiting for Rob and Heather because they're our family.

Yeah. And we woke up the next morning to an email from dear, dear friends of ours who said, we missed you last night. We waited for you for two hours. Everyone had gone home and we didn't know where you were. We couldn't wait to celebrate with you, to share a meal with you, to talk about all that God is doing. And in that moment, Susie, I promise you, God used what could have been a terrible thing.

And he flipped the script. He said, Heather, it is a lie from the pit of hell that you don't belong, that you don't fit in. And there isn't a home for you here. And that is where so many people live in their Christian journey. They settle for crumbs at the orphan table when God has a banquet table set before them and their seat is waiting.

Their seat is waiting and they don't show up because the enemy whispers, you're not good enough for that seat. There's nobody out there for you. You know, in that moment, the Lord did something in me. He broke the power of that narrative.

And that was very like that changed everything. But then I still had to walk out of that place because I had a lot of beliefs and I had built a lot of relationships around the fact that people liked me in some ways, but not the whole of who I am, that they liked me for what I could do for them or how I could serve the Salvation Army or how I made things look good. But that was about what I did, not about who I am. Dr. Brené Brown, who you reference in your work, she talks about how guilt is I did something wrong, but shame is I am something wrong. Like it's me, like something intrinsically in me is not worthy. And so for me, it took a time of walking out of that narrative of shame and feeling like I'm not worthy of belonging into the freedom of being openly embraced by the family that God's given me. And God did not just set me free from the narrative of shame. He gave me the freedom to believe that people are for me. Right.

That it gave me the faith to believe that when some, a Christian brother or sister says to me an affirmation, an edification, that they really mean it. Right. And I know there might be folks listening to say, well, you know, sometimes people say things they don't really mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that happens.

But I was in the habit of believing everyone was like that. And that is not from the Lord. And so I believe that in that moment, and this is where I try to live my life in this place now, is that when the Spirit of God says to me, Heather, I need you to reach out to that person and say this thing, share this scripture, share this song, pray this prayer. I do it. That could mean everything to that person.

And I want to be part of that kind of work here on earth, partnering with the Father. Amen. Well, the Prince waited in the shadows.

Yes. Expecting to find the barefoot Cinderella's and his kindness, it dismantled their fears. And he wiped away the remnant of shame from their faces with the hem of his garment. He exchanged their ashes for bouquets of roses. And he does the same for me.

Yes. And for you and for anyone who's listening today, who has struggled through shame, he can do that for you. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support.

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