John Stumbo, June 26-27

She had her back turned to me as I took my seat. I knew exactly what she was doing, but she was hiding it. I could sense what she was feeling: awkwardness, embarrassment…even shame.

I was at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ. I had been escorted into a hallway with a couple of chairs plopped in front of a TV stuck on a home improvement channel. The Mayo has at least six beautiful waiting areas, but this wasn’t one of them. It was a drab hall with only a few chairs, indicating that not many people had the need to find their way to this part of the building.

The embarrassed woman and I were the only two seated as we waited to be given the barium swallow test where a technician and speech/swallow therapist monitor your attempts to swallow under video x-ray.

I greeted her as I sat down, but she kept her back turned to me as she said, “I’m not trying to be rude.”

“I understand,” I said. “I have one, too.”

“You do?!” She said with shocked surprise, turning toward me and revealing the feeding tube she was pouring formula into.

I don’t think she had ever met anyone who shared her experience of having difficulty with swallowing that required the insertion of a feeding tube into her stomach. It’s something we tend to hide, and for her it brought with it some shame. I wasn’t hungry, but I reached into my backpack, pulled out a can of formula and a syringe and said, “Let’s have lunch together!”

She relaxed and smiled. The embarrassment and shame were gone. Her story spilled out faster than her formula. I had made a friend.

Hiding under shirts or behind doors or within hearts is a world of shame…shame that in turn causes us to hide. Like the leaf-wearing couple hiding from God in the garden, we still cover and cower today. Like the noontime well-user in Samaria, we let our shame isolate us. It’s unnecessary. Jesus knows our hiding places. He meets us there.

He’s the God who understands pain and rejection, suffering and shame, scars and crosses. You’re not going to surprise Him or tell Him anything He hasn’t heard before. He’s either already experienced it Himself or shed His blood for it. The fog of shame disappears in the sun of acceptance. Come out of hiding. Love is waiting.