shame?

The past couple of weeks have been pretty amazing and a testiment to God's ability to work everything out according to his plan. We have been planning and praying about facilitating a Financial Peace University class at our church. If FPU is unfamiliar to you, google it and you'll find some great info on learning to gain peace in your heart and life regarding finances. By way of free publicity, God has provided the placement of an article in both the Saginaw News and Bay City Times about our story of righting our financial ship through God's mercy on us. It has garnered interest and for that we are so grateful. The past couple days, though, I find myself dealing with an emotion regarding our rough financial journey that I thought I had worked through. That emotion is shame. Many, many people in the past two days have commented about the article, congratulated me, brought in the article for me, etc. It suddenly dawned on me thatwhile we have been fairly open about the mess we were in and God plucking us off from the brink of disaster, these articles were going public in a big way. It's one thing if your family, church family, etc know your mess, but it's quite another when the entire tri-cities knows your mess. I find myself again working through some embarassment that we were SO disgustingly poor stewards of the blessings God had given us. I have talked to God a lot about this in the past two days and He has over and over again brought to my mind the promise that once we repent of our sin, He has taken our sins as far away as the east in from the west. He already put it aside and so I need to also. It's not about me or my embarassment, it's about the hope of a better way. Thank you God for being the ultimate forgiving, merciful Savior.
By the way, our first class was tonight and it went great. Everyone who signed up came and although the discussion started slow, people are warming up to each other and I am so excited to see God working in our class. I once asked Dan why, with all the people on the brink of financial disaster, God chose US to show his mercy on. We could have easily been bankrupt; in fact we should have been bankrupt. Now I truly believe God chose to throw us a lifeline so we could have some credibility that God's way to handle finances, is the only way to go.