Courage to Be True: Moving From Shame to Wholeness
Ann White
5 min read ⭑
Like most little girls growing up, I wanted to be accepted by my peers. So I didn’t dare let any of my friends know about my dad’s erratic and abusive behaviors. I believed I shouldn’t share any of the ugly details of my life; so when I went to school or hung out with friends, I put on a happy face and became the person I thought they would want to be around. Have you ever felt the need to hide who you really are?
Not only did I need to be accepted by friends, but from as far back as I can remember, I wanted and needed the attention I got from boys. My identity became tied up in my relationships with the opposite sex. As a result of not having a stable relationship with my dad and having my parents’ broken marriage as an example, I developed an unhealthy view of what relationships between boys and girls should look like.
In my mind, a loving relationship with the opposite sex was based on my ability to please that other person, no matter how it made me feel. In the big-picture equation, how I felt wasn’t important. There was an emotionally damaged little girl inside me whose distorted thoughts controlled my actions, and she said things like, “Just keep everyone in your life happy because if you don’t, they might get angry or reject you.”
Nastia Petruk; Unsplash
Have you ever been so fearful of losing someone’s love or attention that you found yourself doing things you really didn’t want to do, just to keep them from rejecting you? To me, rejection was like being stabbed in the heart, and I would do whatever it took to keep from experiencing it.
So when my growing enthusiasm for my relationship with God created additional issues in my marriage, I decided once again to set my personal desires aside. I put my relationship with God on hold.
Yet, when I didn’t have enough courage to put God first in my life, God didn’t give up on me. He continued to work with me and directed my path until I gained more courage. He wanted me to get to a place where an honest and loving relationship with him would take precedence in my life and become the central hub of my heart. He wanted me to completely grasp the depth of his love for me, something I was unable to do until I uncovered my true self and understood my identity in Christ — my birthright as a daughter of the King.
When we talk about identity, we are referring to how we see ourselves, our awareness of our personal uniqueness. It’s a lack of this awareness that causes an identity crisis. When we don’t have a clear, consistent sense of who we are, we often allow others to define us. And when we don’t have a sense of God’s presence within us, we may devalue our self-worth. Together, this is a lethal combination.
If you have spent any length of time making fear-based choices, there is a strong chance you have neglected to develop your true identity as a person. But your true self is still there, somewhere, and it’s never too late to find this unique child of God.
When I was first saved, I didn’t fully comprehend who God was, how he defined me, and how much he deeply loved me. I embraced the belief that I would go to heaven and my sins were forgiven, but I couldn’t grasp much more than that. I had no idea what it meant to be a new creation in Christ, so I kept lugging around my trunk of fear, hurt, sin and shame as if it would always be a permanent fixture in my life. This habit lasted for almost three decades until I finally learned how to unpack my emotional baggage and embrace what God thought of me.
“When we embrace our identity in Christ and learn to love ourselves in healthy ways, it frees us to treasure and love others in healthy ways.”
The Bible says, “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). God knows who we are, where we are and what we are — and he loves us unconditionally right in the midst of it all. “God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him” (1 John 4:9). As believers, we must embrace the fact that our pasts don’t define us; our successes or failures don’t define us; the opinions of others don’t define us; what we have or don’t have doesn’t define us; and our fear, hurt, sin and shame don’t define us. God does. It is God — and only God — who defines us.
We must cast out any belief about ourselves that isn’t from God and reject what others say about us that isn’t coming from a genuine place of truth and love. We must believe what God’s Word says about us. In his eyes, we are all these:
Wonderfully complex (Psalm 139:14)
God’s masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10)
Created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27)
Bought with the ultimate price, the blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18,19)
A new person in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Recipients of God’s grace through Christ (Ephesians 1:6,7)
Conquerors through Christ (Romans 8:37)
Blessed with spiritual blessings in Christ (Ephesians 1:3)
Sealed in Christ for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30)
Made right, saved, filled with God’s love and friends with God through Christ (Romans 5:1–11)
As children of God, we are to lead a life worthy of our calling (Ephesians 4:1-3), to lay aside our old sinful self and put on our new nature (Ephesians 4:22-24), and to live in a way consistent with our new identity. We are temples of the Holy Spirit who lives within us (1 Corinthians 6:19). Therefore, we have a responsibility to care for and protect that which is God’s dwelling place. To do this, we must learn to live through him and allow him to live freely in and through us.
What we believe about ourselves affects our ability to make courageous choices. It’s critical to take an up close and personal look at how we view ourselves. Being able to experience the amazing transformation that comes from seeing ourselves through God’s eyes is life-changing. When we embrace our identity in Christ and learn to love ourselves in healthy ways, it frees us to treasure and love others in healthy ways.
Ann White is a native Carolina girl who met her husband and soul mate shortly after moving to Atlanta in 1978. She founded Courage For Life out of a calling to share with others how God and his Word brought restoration to her life and marriage. Ann is an internationally known author, speaker and passionate Bible teacher.
Taken from Courage for Life: Discover a Life Full of Confidence, Hope, and Opportunity! by Ann White. Copyright © 2025. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers.
