When Shame Is Loud

Hey y'all, welcome to season three of Following Jesus in Nursing. This season is centered on finding hope in hard places. Each episode, you'll hear an NCF staff member share about one of the hardest seasons of their life and about how God met them there with grace and strength. I'm gonna be honest with you, a lot of these stories are pretty heavy, but they're also full of genuine hope that I think will serve as a good encouragement to you all as testimonies of just how big, faithful, and good our God is. Throughout the season, I'll also be featuring key resources from NCF, so keep an ear out for those toward the end of each episode.

Our first guest this season is Tiegan. Today, she'll be talking about finding hope when shame is loud. Sometimes, the hardest battles we face are fought within ourselves. And actually inviting others into our struggles opens the door to hope and healing. This episode today does contain discussion of anxiety, depression, and self harm, so listener discretion is advised.

If these topics are difficult for you, please consider listening with support or choosing to engage at another time. Let me open our time today with a short scripture. From Psalm one twelve four, even in darkness, light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. Lord, bring your healing light into the places where we feel shame. Just like you pursued Adam and Eve in the garden when they hid, would you pursue us and heal the parts of us that we try to hide.

Amen.

The shame that I felt was all consuming. I thought about it all the time. I kept it secret from almost everyone in my life, but God started to break through even though I either didn't believe he could help me or maybe I didn't want him to help me, but he he didn't give up on me. No matter how broken or unlovable you feel, no matter how much shame you feel, God is still pursuing you and God is still faithful to you.

Welcome, Tiegan. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Could you just start us out by introducing yourself and help us to get to know you a little bit?

Yeah, of course. My name is Tiegan France. I have been a nurse for four years. I just started a new position working as a critical care float pool nurse, And I'm also a campus staff minister for NCF at the University of Wisconsin Madison. I currently live in the Madison area with my husband, my two guinea pigs, and my nine month old puppy.

And yes, he's very cute and a lot of trouble, but very fun. And fun fact about me, I love trying all different kinds of hobbies. So I've enjoyed traveling. Earlier this year, my husband and I took a big bucket list trip. We went to India, The Maldives, and Paris.

That's so cool.

Trip of a lifetime. Very grateful to have gotten that opportunity. I also enjoy trying other hobbies. I recently started reading cozy murder mysteries. Oh.

I have some people in my life that really enjoy those books, so I've started reading those. And then last winter, I learned how to crochet, and so I enjoy making little animals. I made a little stingray and a little coffee cup with a smiley face on it.

That's so cute.

I call myself a hobby hopper. I like to try all these different things.

I love that. Very adventurous of you.

Thank you.

Well, thank you for helping us to get to know you a little bit because we are about to jump into some deep, hard story stuff. So thank you so much ahead of time for being willing to share honestly honestly and vulnerably today with us. So you're going to talk about some experiences that happened for you during nursing school. Can you just kind of take us back to that time and tell us about what was happening in your life around then?

Yeah, of course. So nursing school, as college usually is for most people, was a time for me of a lot of growth in my life. So not only was I learning how to study and manage my time, I was also financially independent of my parents for the first time. I met lifelong friends. I met my now husband.

It was just a time in my life where I really started learning more about who God made me to be and what my path in life is. In addition to nursing school, I was also student leader for my school's chapter of nurses, Christian fellowship. I was invited into leadership at the end of my freshman year. And I very much felt that I had very low self confidence. I had a lot of social anxiety, but God took those things that for me were these insurmountable weaknesses and he made me into a leader anyways.

So some of the things I got to do as a student leader, I got to learn how to lead a Bible study. I got to help plan speaker events. I helped organize volunteer opportunities. I even got involved in a chapter of inter varsity at another school in my city. That's where I eventually met my husband.

I learned how to lead a large group there. So I, I'm not the only one to have joked this, but I've joked that I dual majored in both nursing and in intervarsity. Those opportunities are a big part of why I'm still on staff with NCF today.

Love

that. But even though I was growing in so many ways in my life at that time, on the inside, I was just struggling immensely. I would procrastinate for hours. I would do poorly on exams because I wouldn't study well. I was turning in schoolwork late.

I would just toss and turn at night, kept awake by anxiety and shame. What my life looked like on the outside was very different from what I was feeling on the inside. When I was a senior in college, I finally started seeing a therapist and I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression, but for years, those symptoms, they affected my friendships, my grades, just every aspect of my life in so many ways. As a way of coping with all these things that I was feeling, I started to struggle with self harm in college. Self harm gave me a way to quiet my thoughts and take all this pain that I was feeling on the inside of my body and bring it to the outside of my body.

And it was so self destructive, but it would help me feel better for a short time. And so no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop. And it just caused me so much shame. I remember thinking to myself, like, how can I lead this Bible study and how can people think I'm such a quote unquote good Christian when I keep like in the secret turning back to this horrible thing again and again? How can God use me in the lives of my friends and my classmates when I'm just struggling so much just to keep my head above water?

And the shame that I felt was all consuming. I thought about it all the time. I kept it secret from almost everyone in my life because I was so afraid that no one would see me the same if they knew who I really was on the inside. Out loud, I would talk about God's unconditional love for us, but inside, I felt like the people in my life would only love me for my performance, and I felt like there was some deep hole in me that even God couldn't really love.

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing, Tegan. That sounds stressful and lonely.

Yeah. It was very lonely.

Talk a little bit about how God met you through this hard time, because that's a lot. And I think it'd be easy to say stuck in that place, but the theme of this season is God being present to us and giving us hope in hard times. Looking back, how did you see God's hand in that season?

I really like how you used the word stuck. At the time, I felt very stuck. But now looking back to the past, I can see some of the ways that God started to break through and the ways He kind of started wearing down my heart, even though I either didn't believe He could help me or maybe I didn't want Him to help me, but He didn't give up on me. One of the big moments for me was during my junior year of college, I went to a conference for Christian young adults that was run by the church denomination that I grew up in. And during this conference, a young woman who was helping to lead it shared very openly about her struggle with an eating disorder.

Even though my struggles look very different from what she had been through, I was so struck by her vulnerability. And instead of thinking, oh, she is less of a leader because of these things she struggled with instead, her honesty gave strength to her leadership.

That's good.

And I realized that that honesty about how God had been faithful to her through her own shortcomings was such a powerful testimony. And I kind of started to wonder, will that ever be true for my story? Oftentimes like my anxiety would be worse at night. And so I would often struggle to get to bed, stay up late at night, just so anxious and tense. And so one night I remember it was just like a desperate whim.

I was just desperate to be able to have some peace and go to sleep. I'm just going to read the Psalms. I don't know what else to do. So I opened up my phone. I started with Psalm one.

I read Psalm two. I read, so I just started reading. Nothing was really sinking in. I was just, I just need something. So I just kept reading, and then I hit Psalm four.

This poem in the ESV translation starts with verse one. Answer me when I call, oh God of my righteousness. You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. Right away, those words caught my attention and they spoke directly into what I was feeling in that moment.

So, I kept reading and I got to verse four where I read, and be silent. And that sentence really struck me because it wasn't saying that the distress is sinful, that the anger itself is sinful. But in those emotions, we're invited to be quiet and to listen to God. So that really struck me. And then I got to the last verse, verse eight.

In peace, I will lie down and sleep for you alone, oh Lord, make me dwell in safety. And when I read that last verse of that prayer, I physically felt all attention just leave my body. And it was such a profound feeling of calm and peacefulness. And immediately I was able to go to bed and fall asleep right away.

Wow. Talk about the power of the word.

Yes. Yes. And another big part of the way that God met me during this time in my life was through the community that he put around me. And so I started being able to open up about what I was struggling with to some close friends in my inter varsity chapter. And I was very scared to do it, but I knew that I wanted close, real friendships and that requires honesty and vulnerability.

And

so I remember it was after a large group, they could tell I wasn't doing well. You know, they checked in on me and later that night we met at this diner. I remember sitting in this booth and sharing my story with them and they just responded with so much gentleness and compassion. And I was so afraid that they would see me differently, that they would judge me, that they would think less of me, but they never ever did. And so it really started to show me what God's faithfulness means in a very practical sense.

We talk about God's faithfulness as sometimes this, like, nebulous thing, like, oh, God will care for us. God will provide for us. But this is how this Christ like love from fellow followers of Jesus. God loved me enough to put me in a community that cared about me as an image bearer of God and a daughter of Christ. Another big thing that helped me as I started to go to therapy.

And one of the ways that that helped me in addition to a place to just talk about things and a place to get better strategies for coping, my therapist also helped me see my struggle with self harm, specifically as an addiction. It wasn't just a coping mechanism, but that alone was something to break free from. For me personally, that was just an important mindset shift, from the outside, a professional to kind of look into what I was going through and help me reframe it and see it differently. I opened up to others in my life, including my NCF campus minister. God continued to just meet me through the love and compassion of those around me.

And then I also had people in my community who were very generous to me. Because of that, I was under less financial stress towards the end of college. And so that helped my anxiety a lot too, because I had less like practical physical needs to stress about. And so that generosity also helped as well. The moment that I think was my real turning point that I remember, I was reading a devotion on Micah seven, and I remember I was sitting on the floor in my apartment and Micah seven:nine says, Because I have sinned against him, I will bear the Lord's wrath until he pleads my case and upholds my cause.

He will bring me out into the light and I will see his righteousness. And I remember reading this verse of repentance, and the devotion question kind of had a prompt about repentance. And I realized as I was reading that, that in my shame, I was trying to hide my guilt from God. In my mind, I knew it was impossible, that I can't hide anything from God, but there was still some part of me that was trying to hold on to that, trying to keep that away from God. And so I remember I'm sitting on the floor and I'm on my knees.

I'm physically in this posture of repentance. And just for the first time, letting go and giving this to God and asking him to heal this part of me, asking him for greater faith. And I didn't get better overnight. It was a long process after that. But after that I wanted to get better because I knew that God's love for me was so much better than anything else I was trying to turn to, to control my emotions and control my circumstances.

That day was probably about five years ago, and now I'm over three and a half years clean from self harm. That recovery is still the hardest thing I've ever done. It's still hard, but I don't have to rely on my own strength and willpower because I know that God is with me.

Wow. That's amazing. I love, Tegan, that you put yourself before God's word, like, over and over again. The Psalms are so good when we're distressed. So I love that you started with the Psalms, and God gave you this invitation through scripture, and you responded with whatever yes you could.

And God took that and brought healing. I love that's so beautiful.

Yeah. And, you know, not every single time that I read scripture did I have such a powerful moment like this. Maybe God met me in a small way, or maybe I read scripture and not feel anything that day. But the more you do it, the more opportunities God has to meet you in that way.

Oh my goodness. Say that again.

The more times that we read scripture, the more opportunities that God has to meet us through scripture.

Yes. I love that. Because you are highlighting these magic moments, these, you know, moments in scripture that were really powerful and meaningful, but that's not accounting for all the other times that you read it. And you're just like, that's nice, and then moved on. So I appreciate you highlighting that.

Yeah. Okay. So as listeners are hearing your story and how God met you in one of the hardest experiences of your life, what would you say to a nursing student or a nurse who feels overwhelmed today in their own situation in life?

I want my fellow health care workers and health care students to know that they are loved by a God whose faithfulness is so much more powerful than our doubts and our shame. And shame in particular is so poisonous. It's so dangerous. It led me to isolate myself from true friendship. It chipped away at my trust in God.

But no matter how broken or unlovable you feel, no matter how much shame you feel, God is still pursuing you and God is still faithful to you. If anyone who's listening relates to any part of this story or you're struggling with some of these things, or someone you love is struggling with some of these things, I want you to know that there's hope and there's resources to help. That feeling doesn't last forever, even though it really does feel like it in the moment. Nine eighty eight is the National Suicide Hotline for people experiencing moments of crisis. I also hope that NCF can be a place where communities can form and support each other through the real realities of living in a world that's broken by sin.

I have a close friend and NCF colleague who I can tell her, I think I'm starting to experience a depressive episode. And she'll pull out her planner and she'll say, all right, let's put times on the calendar this week. We're going to spend time together. I won't let you isolate yourself. I won't let you be alone in this.

We'll just be together over these next few weeks. It makes such a difference even when some of the same feelings are there to have a safe community to share that with. And these things, we are made holistically. We talk about how we care about our patients holistically, but we also need communities that care about us holistically. So sometimes people are experiencing symptoms of mental illness, and a big part of that is because they lack financial resources like money or food.

Those things are such a major stressor. And we, as Christians are called to generously and selflessly love our neighbors. Sometimes we need medication to give us that little bit of extra emotional stamina that we need to start building healthy habits, like nutritious diet and exercise and therapy. And even if a routine of daily prayer and time in God's word feels overwhelming, because sometimes even those very basic needs just feel like too much. Even just finding one section of scripture, one verse to pray, just doing what you can and giving God that opportunity to meet you there is just so good, so important.

When I was preparing to do this podcast recording this morning, I was feeling very anxious about sharing these things. I was reflecting on second Corinthians 12, where Paul, is this great evangelist in the early Christian church, he wrote many of the books in the New Testament. We really looked to him as this like very important person in the first century of people following Jesus. And in second Corinthians 12, writes in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. And that is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Paul's life was different from mine. He lived at a different time. He went through different things. But I also know what it's like to plead with God, to take my weaknesses away from me. And I too am invited to be content and to know that his grace is sufficient for me.

And so while it's not easy to share this part of my story, I know how much it meant to me as a nursing student to hear other stories and to know I was not alone. My hope is that NCF can be a place for others to know that you aren't alone either. You are made in the image of a creator who rested. You are loved by a savior who wept and who knows what it is to suffer. You are helped by the spirit who intercedes for you through groans when words just aren't enough.

There is no part of you that is too broken for God to love.

That's so good, Tegan. Thank you so, so much for just the privilege and honor of hearing your story, for trusting us with your story, and for just sharing your hard won wisdom through the hard things that you've experienced in the ways that you have been open and allowed God to meet you in those tender places. These are some just really beautiful reflections, and I think that listeners are gonna be so blessed to hear this. As we wrap up, what is one word or phrase that listeners can hold on to to remember your story today?

I think the most important thing is just to know that God is faithful.

I love that. And a couple times you unpack that by saying that God pursues us, God doesn't give up on us. I think that's so helpful to remember. Thank you so so much. I loved having you on the podcast today.

Thank you, Tegan.

Thank you, Lara. Thanks for all you do with the podcast. It's a huge blessing.

As we close, the phrase Teigen offered us feels like the right place to land. God is faithful. Not because our lives are easy, not because healing is quick or simple, but because God does not turn away from us in our weakness, our doubt, or our shame. As we heard today, his grace really is sufficient, and his power is made perfect, not in our strength, but in our weakness. If you're listening and parts of this story resonated deeply with you, especially if you're walking through anxiety, depression, self harm, or overwhelming shame, please know this, you are not alone, and there is help available.

If you're in a moment of crisis, you can call or text 988 CRISIS LIFE LINE anytime. And we encourage you to reach out to someone you trust, a friend, a mentor, a counselor, or a pastor, because healing was never meant to happen in isolation. We also hope that Nurses Christian Fellowship can be a place where real community exists, where nurses and nursing students can be honest about hard things and be fully seen, known, and loved. We have groups across the country for both nurses and nursing students. Look for one near you on our website and if there isn't a group in your area consider grabbing a friend or two and starting a group.

We would love to help you with that. Again, reach out on our website or email us at ncfintervarsity dot org. Details about NCF membership can be found at ncfjcn.org and be sure to use the coupon code following for $10 off. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and leave us a rating and a review. Tegan, thank you again for reminding us that there's no part of us too broken for God to love.

And to our listeners, you were made in the image of the creator who rested, loved by a savior who wept, and helped by a spirit who intercedes when words fall short. May you rest today in the truth that God is faithful even in the hardest places. Thanks for listening to Following Jesus in Nursing. We'll see you next time.