The Mugshot That Still Comes Up When My Grandson Googles My Name
The Mugshot That Still Comes Up When My Grandson Googles My Name
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 15, 2026
My grandson is eleven, old enough now to type things into a search bar without asking permission first, and last week he typed in my full name for a school project about family history. He did not tell me what he found. His mother did, carefully, the way you tell someone a wound has reopened. There it still is, sixteen years later, a booking photo from the worst night of my life, indexed and cached and sitting there waiting for anyone with a keyboard to find it. I have been sober fourteen years. I have rebuilt a marriage, walked two daughters down the aisle, held every one of my grandchildren within an hour of their birth. None of that shows up on the first page. The mugshot does.
I used to think shame was something you worked through and came out the other side of, the way you come out the other side of a fever. What that search result taught me is that shame does not always ask permission to come back. It does not care how many years of good fruit I can point to since. It just sits there, patient and indexed, waiting for an eleven-year-old with a school project to wonder, even for a second, who that man was and whether he is still somewhere inside the grandfather who taught him to cast a fishing line.
Scripture does not pretend that kind of exposure is a small thing. It also does not leave me standing there defined by it. Paul writes to the Romans with a flat, unqualified sentence that I have had to read slowly more than once this week. "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. Not reduced condemnation, not condemnation held at a safe distance as long as nobody finds the record. None. The verdict was already handed down, and it was not guilty.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once talked that shame back down. I can tell myself accurately that the past is the past, that everyone has something they would rather not have searchable, that my grandson's mother already handled it with more grace than I deserved. Every sentence is true, and none of it has made that photo feel any less like a verdict waiting to be reread. Reasoning can only rearrange the facts. It has never once been able to change what a fact actually means about me, and that is different work entirely, work I was never equipped to do on my own.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that fourteen years of good behavior never could produce by itself. Paul tells the Corinthians what actually happens to a man who comes to Christ, and it is not a slow renovation of the old structure. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17, NKJV). New creation, not improved version. David already knew the distance God puts between a man and his worst record, long before any search engine existed to keep one of its own. "As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12, NKJV). Micah pictures it even more plainly. "He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins Into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:19, NKJV). The internet keeps a cache. God keeps a seabed, and nothing comes back up from there.
Isaiah promises something I would never have had the nerve to ask for on my own, not just removal but replacement. "Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double; Everlasting joy shall be theirs" (Isaiah 61:7, NKJV). Instead of, not alongside. Paul tells the Philippians the actual posture that comes from believing all of that, not denial of the past but a refusal to keep living there. "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14, NKJV). And Jesus states the whole thing as a fact rather than a hope, the kind of freedom that does not revoke itself every time an old photo resurfaces. "Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36, NKJV).
I called my grandson Saturday and told him, plainly, that the man in that photo was real, and that I am not ashamed to tell him the whole story myself when he is a little older, in my own words instead of a search engine's caption. He said okay, like it was not nearly as big a thing to him as it had been sitting in my chest all week. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which old photo, which old record, which cached page still has the power to make you flinch when you did not expect it. He has a plan for you that was never written by a search algorithm, and He has told you Himself what He already did with the sins that photo represents. He is not holding them against you, and He will never leave you to argue with that old record alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Psalm 103:12; Micah 7:19; Isaiah 61:7; Philippians 3:13-14; John 8:36.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 15, 2026
My grandson is eleven, old enough now to type things into a search bar without asking permission first, and last week he typed in my full name for a school project about family history. He did not tell me what he found. His mother did, carefully, the way you tell someone a wound has reopened. There it still is, sixteen years later, a booking photo from the worst night of my life, indexed and cached and sitting there waiting for anyone with a keyboard to find it. I have been sober fourteen years. I have rebuilt a marriage, walked two daughters down the aisle, held every one of my grandchildren within an hour of their birth. None of that shows up on the first page. The mugshot does.
I used to think shame was something you worked through and came out the other side of, the way you come out the other side of a fever. What that search result taught me is that shame does not always ask permission to come back. It does not care how many years of good fruit I can point to since. It just sits there, patient and indexed, waiting for an eleven-year-old with a school project to wonder, even for a second, who that man was and whether he is still somewhere inside the grandfather who taught him to cast a fishing line.
Scripture does not pretend that kind of exposure is a small thing. It also does not leave me standing there defined by it. Paul writes to the Romans with a flat, unqualified sentence that I have had to read slowly more than once this week. "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. Not reduced condemnation, not condemnation held at a safe distance as long as nobody finds the record. None. The verdict was already handed down, and it was not guilty.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once talked that shame back down. I can tell myself accurately that the past is the past, that everyone has something they would rather not have searchable, that my grandson's mother already handled it with more grace than I deserved. Every sentence is true, and none of it has made that photo feel any less like a verdict waiting to be reread. Reasoning can only rearrange the facts. It has never once been able to change what a fact actually means about me, and that is different work entirely, work I was never equipped to do on my own.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that fourteen years of good behavior never could produce by itself. Paul tells the Corinthians what actually happens to a man who comes to Christ, and it is not a slow renovation of the old structure. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17, NKJV). New creation, not improved version. David already knew the distance God puts between a man and his worst record, long before any search engine existed to keep one of its own. "As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12, NKJV). Micah pictures it even more plainly. "He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins Into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:19, NKJV). The internet keeps a cache. God keeps a seabed, and nothing comes back up from there.
Isaiah promises something I would never have had the nerve to ask for on my own, not just removal but replacement. "Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double; Everlasting joy shall be theirs" (Isaiah 61:7, NKJV). Instead of, not alongside. Paul tells the Philippians the actual posture that comes from believing all of that, not denial of the past but a refusal to keep living there. "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14, NKJV). And Jesus states the whole thing as a fact rather than a hope, the kind of freedom that does not revoke itself every time an old photo resurfaces. "Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36, NKJV).
I called my grandson Saturday and told him, plainly, that the man in that photo was real, and that I am not ashamed to tell him the whole story myself when he is a little older, in my own words instead of a search engine's caption. He said okay, like it was not nearly as big a thing to him as it had been sitting in my chest all week. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which old photo, which old record, which cached page still has the power to make you flinch when you did not expect it. He has a plan for you that was never written by a search algorithm, and He has told you Himself what He already did with the sins that photo represents. He is not holding them against you, and He will never leave you to argue with that old record alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Psalm 103:12; Micah 7:19; Isaiah 61:7; Philippians 3:13-14; John 8:36.
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