The Lie of Shame

The Lie of Shame

Shame has a way of sticking to you like glue. It lingers in the looks people give, the words they speak, and even the silence they keep. For a long time, I believed its lie—that because I was a pregnant teenager, I was less than, unworthy, and already disqualified.

Back in 1999, being a teen mom wasn’t something you could hide. My belly made my story visible, and people didn’t hold back their judgments. I’ll never forget sitting in a college classroom, determined to keep chasing my education. My professor looked straight at me, belly round with life, and told me I didn’t belong there. Her exact words were, “Go home and knit some booties.” Then she kicked me out of class. Just like that, my hopes of being seen as a student, as a young woman with dreams, vanished under the label of “teen mom.”

I thought maybe work would be different. I got a job as a nanny, caring for a sweet toddler. But every time I showed up for work, the child’s mom would corner me in her living room. Instead of giving me encouragement, she gave me lectures. She told me I needed to get married, that I was living in sin, that I was ruining my life. What she didn’t know was that I was already carrying enough—fear of the unknown, worry about the future, and the weight of everyone’s opinions.

The message was clear: I was to be ashamed.

But shame, I’ve learned, is a liar.

Fast forward to today, and things look very different. Babies are being born to women of every age—young, old, and everything in between. More are born to single mothers than to married ones. What used to be whispered about is now common. Yet shame hasn’t disappeared. It just takes new shapes—comments online, subtle judgments, or the quiet voice inside telling you that you’ll never measure up.

And then I think of Mary. Yes, Mary, the mother of Jesus. From the outside looking in, she was just another unwed girl with a story no one believed. People whispered. People judged. Yet God entrusted her with His Son. What the world saw as scandal, God called sacred.

That is the truth that undoes shame.

Looking back, I can see how those moments in 1999—being pushed out of a classroom, scolded in someone’s living room—weren’t the end of my story. They were the beginning. Shame tried to convince me that I had no place, but God was writing a different narrative all along.

The lie of shame says you are disqualified. The truth says your story still matters.