The Shame That Lingers

The Shame That Lingers: What It Costs

I wonder sometimes if the shame I carried for leaving the convent at fifty was the heaviest thing I ever held. Not the weight of grief, or the ache of loneliness after Thomas died, but this quiet, persistent whisper: You abandoned your calling.

The cost was steep. I traded the deep, still silence of the chapel for the clatter of a kitchen, the certainty of the liturgy for the messy uncertainty of raising children. I gave up the rhythm of the bell, the shared purpose of the choir, the profound peace of knowing I was exactly where I was meant to be. There was no longer a single, clear path before me. Only the winding road of a life shared with another, with all its unexpected turns and sudden storms.

What did I gain? Oh, the fierce, tender joy of holding a newborn, the sound of laughter echoing in a house that was truly ours. The way Thomas would hum off-key while fixing the leaky faucet, the way we’d sit in comfortable silence on the porch, watching the sunset paint the sky. I gained a love that was real, messy, and utterly human. I gained the taste of shared bread, the warmth of a hand held in the dark.

And yet, the shame lingered. For years, I’d feel it when the church bells rang on Sunday, a pang like a missing limb. I’d wonder if I’d been selfish, if I’d chosen the ordinary over the sacred.

But now, at eighty-one, sitting alone in the quiet house I once shared with Thomas, I see it differently. The shame wasn’t the cost. It was the price of love. The price of choosing the human, the vulnerable, the here over the distant, the certain, the there. The shame was the shadow cast by the light I chose to step into.

What if I’d stayed? I might have known a different kind of peace. But I would not have known the taste of my children’s tears on my cheek, the weight of Thomas’s head on my shoulder in the quiet hours. I would not have known the profound, ordinary grace of a life fully lived, not in the sanctuary, but in the kitchen, in the garden, in the space between heartbeats.

There’s a kind of grace in that lingering shame, I think. It reminds me that every choice is a crossing, a letting go, a taking on. It reminds me I chose to be here, in the beautiful, imperfect, real world. And that, I believe, was worth every moment of the doubt.

— Gertrude Carroll, still wondering