The Grocery Store I Drive Twenty Minutes Out of My Way to Avoid
The Grocery Store I Drive Twenty Minutes Out of My Way to Avoid
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 8, 2026
There is a grocery store four minutes from my house that I have not walked into in eleven years. I drive past the turn for it almost every day, and every single time I keep driving, out past two more lights, into a parking lot that costs me an extra twenty minutes round trip, because the woman who works the second register at the close one knew me when I was still drinking. She watched me walk through her line more times than I can count, unsteady, buying the same bottle in the same brown bag, and some mornings she was kind enough to pretend she didn't notice. I have been sober fifteen years. I have rebuilt almost everything that mattered. And I still cannot make myself stand in her line, because some part of me is convinced that the second she sees my face, the only thing she will actually see is the man I used to be.
I used to think I had dealt with my past because I no longer flinched when I talked about it. I can tell my testimony in front of a room full of strangers without my voice shaking. What I could not do, until I really looked at it, was walk into one particular building four minutes from my front door. That is how I learned shame is not the same thing as guilt. Guilt says I did something wrong. Shame says I am something wrong, and it does not need new evidence to keep making its case. It just needs a cashier's face and a grocery list to bring the whole old verdict back up like it was never settled.
God names this exact kind of shame to a people who had plenty of history they would rather not revisit either. "Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; neither be disgraced, for you will not be put to shame; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and will not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore" (Isaiah 54:4, NKJV). He does not tell them the shameful things never happened. He tells them the shame itself does not get to keep governing them, which is a very different promise than pretending the second register never watched me buy what I used to buy.
David had already lived through enough of his own ruin to know exactly what God does with it once it is actually confessed instead of just managed from a distance. "He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities" (Psalm 103:10, NKJV), and then he goes further than I would have dared to write myself. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12, NKJV). Removed. Not filed away where I can still find it every time I drive past that turn. I keep a drawer in my own memory that God apparently does not keep at all.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten me through that parking lot. I can remind myself accurately that it was eleven years ago, that the woman has probably forgotten me entirely, that even if she remembers, her opinion of a Tuesday afternoon in my old life changes nothing true about who I am now. Every one of those sentences is correct, and not one of them has ever once gotten my hands on that steering wheel to turn left instead of straight. That is because shame was never actually a facts problem I could argue my way out of. It is a verdict, and Paul tells me plainly that the verdict was already overturned by somebody with the actual authority to overturn it. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:1, NKJV). No condemnation is not a feeling I am supposed to manufacture by thinking harder about grace. It is a legal fact about me that was true before I ever drove past that turn for the first time.
This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own best arguments never could, not a stronger case for feeling better about myself, but an actual freedom underneath the old verdict. Paul tells the Corinthians exactly where that freedom lives. "Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17, NKJV). Liberty, not from the memory, but from the memory's right to run my life. And he does not leave me standing still in that freedom either. "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18, NKJV). Unveiled face. I had been keeping mine covered for eleven years, convinced the veil was humility, when it was actually just shame wearing a quieter costume. The writer of Hebrews tells me what an unveiled face is actually supposed to do next. "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16, NKJV). Boldly. Not boldly because I finally earned it, boldly because mercy was already sitting there waiting on me to stop driving the long way around.
I made the turn yesterday. She was at the second register, same as always, and she looked up and said my name like it was just my name, nothing underneath it, and rang up my groceries, and that was the entire encounter. God is alive this morning, and He already knows exactly which building you keep driving twenty minutes out of your way to avoid, and exactly which old version of you that building keeps resurrecting. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on everyone forgetting who you used to be, and He has told you Himself that He will never leave you alone in that parking lot, deciding which way to turn.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Isaiah 54:4; Psalm 103:10; Psalm 103:12; Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 3:17; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Hebrews 4:16.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 8, 2026
There is a grocery store four minutes from my house that I have not walked into in eleven years. I drive past the turn for it almost every day, and every single time I keep driving, out past two more lights, into a parking lot that costs me an extra twenty minutes round trip, because the woman who works the second register at the close one knew me when I was still drinking. She watched me walk through her line more times than I can count, unsteady, buying the same bottle in the same brown bag, and some mornings she was kind enough to pretend she didn't notice. I have been sober fifteen years. I have rebuilt almost everything that mattered. And I still cannot make myself stand in her line, because some part of me is convinced that the second she sees my face, the only thing she will actually see is the man I used to be.
I used to think I had dealt with my past because I no longer flinched when I talked about it. I can tell my testimony in front of a room full of strangers without my voice shaking. What I could not do, until I really looked at it, was walk into one particular building four minutes from my front door. That is how I learned shame is not the same thing as guilt. Guilt says I did something wrong. Shame says I am something wrong, and it does not need new evidence to keep making its case. It just needs a cashier's face and a grocery list to bring the whole old verdict back up like it was never settled.
God names this exact kind of shame to a people who had plenty of history they would rather not revisit either. "Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; neither be disgraced, for you will not be put to shame; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and will not remember the reproach of your widowhood anymore" (Isaiah 54:4, NKJV). He does not tell them the shameful things never happened. He tells them the shame itself does not get to keep governing them, which is a very different promise than pretending the second register never watched me buy what I used to buy.
David had already lived through enough of his own ruin to know exactly what God does with it once it is actually confessed instead of just managed from a distance. "He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities" (Psalm 103:10, NKJV), and then he goes further than I would have dared to write myself. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12, NKJV). Removed. Not filed away where I can still find it every time I drive past that turn. I keep a drawer in my own memory that God apparently does not keep at all.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten me through that parking lot. I can remind myself accurately that it was eleven years ago, that the woman has probably forgotten me entirely, that even if she remembers, her opinion of a Tuesday afternoon in my old life changes nothing true about who I am now. Every one of those sentences is correct, and not one of them has ever once gotten my hands on that steering wheel to turn left instead of straight. That is because shame was never actually a facts problem I could argue my way out of. It is a verdict, and Paul tells me plainly that the verdict was already overturned by somebody with the actual authority to overturn it. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:1, NKJV). No condemnation is not a feeling I am supposed to manufacture by thinking harder about grace. It is a legal fact about me that was true before I ever drove past that turn for the first time.
This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own best arguments never could, not a stronger case for feeling better about myself, but an actual freedom underneath the old verdict. Paul tells the Corinthians exactly where that freedom lives. "Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17, NKJV). Liberty, not from the memory, but from the memory's right to run my life. And he does not leave me standing still in that freedom either. "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18, NKJV). Unveiled face. I had been keeping mine covered for eleven years, convinced the veil was humility, when it was actually just shame wearing a quieter costume. The writer of Hebrews tells me what an unveiled face is actually supposed to do next. "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16, NKJV). Boldly. Not boldly because I finally earned it, boldly because mercy was already sitting there waiting on me to stop driving the long way around.
I made the turn yesterday. She was at the second register, same as always, and she looked up and said my name like it was just my name, nothing underneath it, and rang up my groceries, and that was the entire encounter. God is alive this morning, and He already knows exactly which building you keep driving twenty minutes out of your way to avoid, and exactly which old version of you that building keeps resurrecting. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on everyone forgetting who you used to be, and He has told you Himself that He will never leave you alone in that parking lot, deciding which way to turn.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Isaiah 54:4; Psalm 103:10; Psalm 103:12; Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 3:17; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Hebrews 4:16.
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