Suffocated By Guilt

It’s a gorgeous day in Tucson. I’m seated on a coffeeshop patio in the foothills and it’s a blustery 76 degrees. I should be basking in the glory of this weather, landscape, pumpkin spice coffee, but instead my chest is tight with guilt. Many of us can’t take a full breath because of stress, but the weight I feel on my lungs is from guilt. And I don’t know where the heck it springs from the majority of the time.

Something goes slightly wrong and I might have nothing to do with it, but my mind jumps to “How could I have prevented this? Where was I negligent?” The guilt squeezes me and wrings the goodness out of my days.

I have always thought of guilt as God’s cloud cover– a gentle punishment for some misguided steps. But did he ever mean for it to torment us? To make us question so many of our decisions? I don’t think so.

I love Hope for the Heart’s descriptions of the two kinds of guilt:

“One is a friend who speaks truth, gently leading you to repentance and forgiveness. The other is a secret conspirator who taunts and condemns, bringing dishonor and inner shame. False guilt arises when you blame yourself even though you’ve committed no wrong or when you continue to blame yourself after you have confessed and turned from your sin.” 

I’m quick to recite Philippians 4:6-7 (Be anxious about nothing…) in my head when stressed, but I don’t have a go-to verse when I’m feeling guilty because, well, sometimes it’s deserved guilt. Stuff I should be feeling because I messed up.

My dad said something comical recently about the differences between he and my mom. This isn’t verbatim but it went something like, “I’m an outlaw cowboy with too much righteousness and not enough guilt and your mom is a stoic Swede with too much humility and all the guilt.” So their offspring is somehow both….lots of righteousness and lots of guilt.

So how do we distinguish between edifying guilt and pointless guilt? I don’t have a quick answer. But I’d like to begin by looking for the cause and then deciding if I’m falsely blaming myself. Ironically enough, I readily take on the pointless guilt, but fight the guilt I might actually deserve at times because I refuse to admit I’m in the wrong.

Take my husband Matt and I…we are both strong-willed and prideful. We both know how effective flinging guilt can be, so we sometimes will deliberately put it on each other. But I think God probably looks at that and says, “Hey, you don’t know what you’re doing with that. It’s potent stuff.” Guilt is a powerful feeling; not one mere mortals should be wielding.

But if you’re a non-confrontational person like me, then guilt is your go-to language of aggression. But that’s not a language any one claims fluency in, it’s just a tool of manipulation. Throwing guilt usually works, but if I see changes in Matt because I’ve burdened him with guilt, I don’t feel good about it. Because I know beneath that reluctant change in behavior, there’s resentment. And that’s a dangerous word in a marriage.

This will probably be a lifelong struggle. Just because I carry unnecessary guilt does not mean I have the right to share the wealth. God didn’t design us to take all the blame. We can’t stomach it. That much guilt will physically make us ill. When good guilt comes along, we acknowledge it, target the cause, learn from it and move on. MOVE ON! And know that we are forgiven and don’t need to pay forward our guilt with passive-aggressive comments (preaching to you, Annie G).

 “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Psalm 103:12