Five oatmeal cream pies. In a couple of hours. Yep. I did that. And as ridiculous as that sounds, what happened in my head afterward is the reason I’m talking about it.
One poor choice became another. Then another. And pretty soon I wasn’t simply thinking, “That was a bad decision.”
I was in what I call the shame cave.
“You know better.”
“Why can’t you control yourself?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
That’s the part I want to talk about.
This week’s Defenders LIVE gets into something I’ve struggled with for a long time, my “perfect versus piece of shit” mindset.
I’m talking about:
Why one bad choice can make the next one easier
How accountability can quietly turn into shame
Why I learned to associate perfection and control with safety
Why recognizing the pattern doesn’t automatically make it disappear
The difference between “I made a bad choice” and “I am bad”
Why trying to perform my way back into feeling worthy never works
How remembering who I am in Christ helps me make the next right choice
I’m still figuring this out. That’s actually why I’m talking about it.
Maybe the problem isn’t that we keep failing to be perfect.
Maybe the problem is believing perfect or worthless were ever our only choices.
