When I became a Christian at 35, I thought the hardest part would be learning new things…. New habits, new disciplines, new ways of thinking about God.

I wasn't prepared for the hardest part actually being old things.
Specifically, looking back at my romantic past and feeling a kind of shame I didn't have language for yet.

It wasn't that I missed any particular person.
It was something harder to name.
I felt ashamed of who I had been with them.
The version of me that settled, that chased, that gave pieces of myself away to men who were never going to stay.

I thought getting over my past meant getting over the men. It didn't.
It meant forgiving the woman I'd been.

Most advice about getting over an ex focuses on logistics.
“Delete his number. Stop checking his profile. Give it time.”

That advice isn't wrong. But it treats the problem as if it's only about him.
For a lot of us, the harder work isn't missing a person.
It's carrying shame about who we were in that relationship, and feeling like that version of us disqualifies us from something better now.

Regret says, “I wish I hadn't done that”.
Shame says, “I am bad because I did”.
Regret fades with time. Shame doesn't, because shame isn't actually about the relationship anymore. It's about identity.

John 4 tells the story of a woman at a well, with a specific romantic history.
Five husbands, and the man she was currently with wasn't one of them.
Jesus knew all of it before she said a word.

He didn't open the conversation by addressing her past.
He offered her something else entirely. "Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst" (John 4:14).
He met her first. The truth of her history came after, not as a condition for the conversation, but as part of being fully known.

She didn't need to clean herself up before Jesus would speak with her.
She ran back into town afterward and told everyone what had happened, not hiding from her history, but no longer defined by it either.

Romans 8:1 states it plainly. "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Not reduced condemnation. NO condemnation!

And 2 Corinthians 5:17 goes further. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"

The old has gone. Not the old is slowly fading. Not the old will eventually stop mattering…. GONE!
That includes every choice you made before you knew better, with every person you're still carrying shame about.

1. Separate regret from shame. Ask yourself honestly which one you're actually carrying. Regret can be learned from. Shame needs to be brought to God directly, not managed alone.

2. Stop auditioning for your own forgiveness. You cannot earn what Christ already paid for. If you're still trying to prove you deserve forgiveness for your past, you've misunderstood what the cross actually accomplished.

3. Let the relationship teach you without defining you. What it revealed about your patterns matters. What it says about your worth does not.

4. Tell the truth about your past without performing shame over it. Like the woman at the well, you don't need to hide your history or dramatize it. You can simply be known, fully, and free.

Getting over an ex was never really about forgetting a person. It was about believing that the woman you were with him is not the woman God sees when He looks at you now.

If learning to separate your past from your identity is exactly the work you're in right now, that's the same process I walk through in From Believing to Becoming.
It will help you stop carrying shame you were never meant to hold, and start building from a place of grace instead. You can grab it here

With love and faith,
Zena