The Gift of Guilt

"I'll never get over my guilt," is a sentence I hear often from parents who have suffered the traumatic loss of a child (and all losses of children are traumatic - even if they are grown up when we lose them).

If we stay in this place of ruminating over our regrets and guilt, we are spared a bit from the acknowledgement of all our loss. Maybe it is easier to talk about our feelings of guilt than it is to live with the reality of all the things that will not happen now that they are gone.

It is all HARD. Guilt is crushing; mourning is like having heart surgery without anesthesia - every damn day.

But here's the thing - guilt is not really a gift unless it is true, legitimate wrongdoing - if that is true, then we know how to proceed: ask for forgiveness and make amends. However, it is usually not the whole story. Sometimes we give ourselves too much credit for what we perceive we can (or should) control. Secondly, it is expensive. Unremitting, unresolved feelings of guilt steals the present moment. It takes us away from the living.

Guilt, the lying little bugger, tells us that it serves as a living tribute to the loss. But guilt really just keeps stealing from the living. Guilt asks us to keep dying for our dead - and that sounds noble, even preferable to our grief over another's passing.

But what if there is another way? What if we acknowledge the specifics of what we cannot undo that was 'wrong' and refuse the offering of a generalized guilty feeling with no legitimate claim to reality? We acknowledge our legitimate wrongdoing and seek forgiveness, make amends. If we find that some of the beliefs that we have held about our guilt are simply not true, then we must move forward. We live. We live to honor the lost. We live well for those among us, our other children, our family that is still present for us to love well.

These are not easy things nor are they appropriate first responses for someone new to grief. But if we find that our grief is interfering with our love for others - maybe it is time to re-evaluate the ways we have thought about our loss. Maybe we need a grief counselor or a grief group to help us reframe our habitual way of thinking about our suffering.

Maybe we need some support for healing.

What Does Easter Mean to You?

Technically, Easter is the period of fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday. So although our traditional Easter Sunday has passed...I'm still thinking about the resurrection. I guess it means more to me this year, this promise of God's breath resurrecting dry dead bones. This past year has been one of great losses for many. One of the things I think about on Easter are some of the ways I see people believing in the power of resurrection. My friends, who before they met lost spouses through divorce, each lost a children through death related to SUD and Mental Health issues but somehow in the intervening years found each other. Today they are married and living a resurrected life. They have certainly not forgotten their losses, but have found their dry, dead bones breathed on by God, revived by love when they least expected it.

Or my friend Lori who finds a sense of purpose in sitting with other mom's who have lost children. Or another who, having lost a child pours all his energy into finding ways to help other families maybe save their own children before it is too late. What generosity of spirit! They have not run from their deaths; they have leaned into resurrection. And it is hard.

Or someone who early on in the pandemic donated extra that she had to help pay rent for someone in our community who could not have kept her home without that support. Totally unsolicited, unaware of the need, she gave at a time, just the right time, to revive a young couple who was losing all hope.

This is not just an individual matter. Consider St. James Church here in Richmond, Va. which burned in 1994. Built in the 1770's it burned to the ground. But what did they do? They carried on. They even acquired a motto: "Let us rise up and build" Nehemiah 2:18.

How might we all benefit from a new motto, after a long year of losses?How might we rise up and build?

A Glimmer of Light…

“We get to the beauty through the brutal. Not over or around or under but straight through. We do not ignore each other’s pain - we help carry it.”

Glennon Doyle

I used to think that the best way to manage pain was to super-spiritualize it. Be hopeful! Be positive! Remind myself of all those sayings I have heard all my life about God and suffering. Then I studied the scriptures. The dissonance was shocking. It gave me the same feeling as an ice cream headache.

I read the laments - full on works of suffering, grief, mourning and loss. The writer was going THROUGH pain. He (I assume) even had the temerity to question God about his suffering - much like Job. What’s going on here, I thought? The few “friends'' who tried to correct Job’s theology ultimately received the harshest critique from God - not Job!

I’ve got a lot of unlearning to do. I’ve worn deep ruts around tough topics, suffering, and grief. I’ve tried to tippy toe around them and not get caught in their sticky web. I’ve tried to comfort the comfortless. Why? Was I simply trying to relieve my own anxiety? Was I parroting others, assuming they must be right about the nature of loss?

Straight through. Like the psalmists; on we march. God with us. That truth is amazing enough right there. We need no fancy stories or justifications or blaming to deal with suffering.

God with us.

God with us.

God with us.

There it is; there is the glimmer of light in darkness.

Meditation Moment on Grief and Loss

I am grateful for his clear eyes and steady hands, his ability to work, his sense of humor. I can’t say there are whole days when I don’t worry, but there are hours. I also grieve. I grieve for the years overwhelmed by his addiction, years when I was lost to my family, my writing, my self. I grieve for the loss of my optimism, the enthusiasm I used to feel that is now so hard to reclaim. I grieve for the relationship I used to have with Seth, the relationship I might have had with him now, one of openness and trust. I do not know how long it will take to rebuild that intimacy, or if that is still possible. I remember thinking when Seth was born that I would give my life to save his. Now I know that if he slips, there is nothing I can do.

Wendy Mnookin, “My Son, the Junkie”

Take some time to grieve for what you have lost or fear losing. Ask God for the Balm of Gilead.

Grief and Loss

But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray[4]

People who study the art of change say that within us lies a lot of ambivalence, even about things we desperately desire to change. This ambivalence is housed in our brain and it makes total sense that our brain would hate change.

The human brain is an amazingly complex organ, but it has one thing in common with my grandfather Bill Murdock. It loves to sit on the porch and smoke a good cigar. The brain loves patterns. It does not much care if its understanding of patterns is actually accurate. It loves to find patterns so that it can take more smoke breaks.

Patterns give the brain the opportunity to go on auto-pilot and catch its breath. My husband, who works from home, sometimes ends up at the gym instead of a scheduled afternoon meeting because he is in the habit of going to the gym in the afternoon as a work break.

If I come home late after a rough day, my brain wants a spoon and a jar of peanut butter because my brain believes that eating peanut butter out of a jar is a wonderful way to deal with stress. It’s paired stress and eating peanut butter and believes it is a pattern my whole being should embrace. But my healthy eating intentions do NOT embrace eating a jar of peanut butter as an after dinner snack. Who wins?

If it is easy and convenient and within reach, the peanut butter wins. My brain is ambivalent about making changes. It liked the old way of dealing with stress it does NOT want to learn new things.

But my brain does not get the final say! Understanding that change is hard and my brain will fight my good intentions at every turn, the peanut butter had to go. Peanut butter is not a bad thing. In fact, it is quite yummy. But I am having to break a bad habit for a good reason.

My brain and I regret the banishment of my little friend peanut butter, but he had to go for a higher purpose.

What do you need to let go of in order to set yourself for transformation? Although we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings and all that heavy lifting is on him, we still have a part to play in the work of change! What’s yours?