Letting Go of Guilt

A Guilty Conscience 


The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will we harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgression from us.  - Psalm 103: 8-12


Is it just me or is the hardest person to forgive yourself? We can forgive others who hurt us yet we struggle so long to forgive ourselves. I still harbor disappointment and guilt for things I did years ago.  I have asked for forgiveness and it was granted to me long before I ever even asked. Ye,t I cannot seem to forgive myself at times.

Lately, my heart has been especially heavy laden with guilt. Sometimes, I have been hurt and instead of letting go and letting God heal those pains, I have struck out and tried to hurt my transgressor in return.  In the moment, this can give a sense of satisfaction. However, not long after, it just leaves me feeling ashamed of myself. So, instead of being hurt, I am now hurt and guilty. I have seen myself behave in a way that is not who I am or who I'd ever like to be.  I have let my hurt win and lost myself in it.

Forgiving myself is the thing I have struggled with the most in my faith.  I have hurt others, and I have hurt myself. Once I came to Christ, this did not stop.  Some like to think that giving your life to Christ stops all temptations or makes us strong enough to resist them. That is grossly wrong.  If anything, once we come to Christ, the temptations become stronger and ever more present. The only difference is that those who know Christ, know that they can seek solace and shelter in His unconditional love.

I am so happy to know that I can find peace in the knowledge that God forgave me for what I've done as soon as it happened. Now, I just have to work on forgiving myself. Because when I hold onto guilt, I cannot fully embrace God's love.

A Wretch Like Me

Proud as a Peacock

Most people pride themselves on their strengths whether they be physical, mental or intellectual. We find things we excel at and we hone them: if we want to improve our physical strength, we go to the gym; if we went to improve our intellectual or mental strength, we might take a class or read a book.

Our culture seldom, if ever, takes pride in our weaknesses, in our shortcomings. We often spend just as much time and effort covering up our flaws as we do" peacocking" our prides. I am certainly guilty of this.

Repeat After Me: "I am weak."

He said to me,“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

This is one of my favorite verses for several reasons.

• First of all, this verse tells us implicitly to not only admit our weakness but to delight in them.  In The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning argues that it is not until we admit and accept our weaknesses that we can fully love Christ.  Think about it, if you were in a relationship with someone and were hiding some deep dark secret from them, you would always feel as if your partner did not love you fully because they did not know everything about you. With Christ, we don't have to worry about that because He knows everything about us and loves us anyways.

• Secondly, this verse tells us not only that we should be proud of our weaknesses, but that we can find strength in them when we give them to Christ. God takes our downfalls and uses them to bring glory to His name.  If we try to hide these weaknesses, we only hurt ourselves and prevent God from using them for His greater purposes.

I Delight in my Weaknesses

Throughout most of college, I did not attend church at all, except on holidays.  I didn't do this because I did not want to know Christ; I did this because I thought Christ did not want to get to know me.  In high school, I began and in college I continued to live a life that was nothing to be proud of, committing the same sins over and over again and feeling a certain amount of pleasure in them.  I missed classes, made excuses, showed up to work late, lost friends and made my parents cry and beg me to change many times. 

Once I came to Christ, I wanted to hide my less than perfect past and conceal the burdens and imperfections I still continue to harbor. However, the closer I become to Christ, the more I seem to want to boast my weaknesses and share them with others; the closer I become to Christ, the less ashamed I am of who I was or who I am. 

You see, God doesn't just use picture-perfect saints to carry out His mission, he can use a sinful wretch like me too.

It's Just a Little Paint

Me at 4- breaking hearts and crayons like nobody's business!

When I was four, my dad became an associate pastor at a large church in Rocky Mount, NC. Being too young for school, I began to attend the church's daycare program.  This meant that I got to ride with Daddy every day to work, and when he was finished with work for the day, he would leave his office, walk down the hallway and take me home.

My sister, being a year older than me, began kindergarten, and so I was left in daycare alone.  Daddy and I began a routine of sorts: every day, he would take me home from daycare, fix me lunch and then set me in front of the television to watch Muppet Babies while he took a nap.  Every day I would sit Indian style on the carpet, my little neck craning up at the mammoth screen as I sang along to the cartoon's theme song. I could probably sing the song word for word to this day.

Daddy took naps because, well, he loves to take naps. I watched television because, as a child, I always refused to take them.  I remember that before my mother went back to work (she quit her job when she had my sister and didn't go back until we moved to NC when I was four), she would put my sister and me down for naps. My sister, always the obedient, sweet child, would take a nap. Myself, being the "mess" of the family, would pretend to sleep until my mother left the room. Then I would tip-toe around the house until she eventually discovered me, which she usually did. After a few years, she gave up the hope of naps for me.

Sometimes, when Daddy had business to finish in his office, he would pick me up from daycare and I would sit down in a leather chair, with big brass buttons,that swallowed me whole.  Sometimes, he would let me play on a typewriter he had.  Oh yes, he had a typewriter- I just made myself look ancient.  I would type away, having no idea what the letters on the paper meant but inventing stories in my head of what they said.


The story I am about to tell you, I'm not really sure how or why I even remember, but it's somehow been carved into my memory all these years, and I have affectionately stowed it away on the bookshelves of my mind to be pulled down on a bad day like an old and familiar story.

One day, something terribly tragic happened that broke my four-year-old heart. What it was, I have no clue. Probably a scraped knee or some teasing from a playmate. Anyways, to a toddler, whatever it was, it was devastating. I ran to my dad's office, sobbing over the travesty that had happened.  On this day, I was sporting a fresh mask of face paint- maybe I was crying because I was submitted to such cruel and unusual punishment as face paint which makes your face endlessly itch from the mere knowledge that you are no longer allowed to scratch it. Anyways, I ran into his arms and he scooped me up, put me into his lap, and sat me down in his leather chair behind his desk.  He held me, rocked me, shushed me and listened to me hiccup between tears what had upset me. To a grown man, my childish heartache probably sounded silly and trivial but if he had thought that, he never showed it. I remember clearly, the frown lines etched into his forehead as he listened with concern as if I was telling him that the world was coming to an end.  Once I was calmed, he picked me up, put me on the floor and helped me clean my tear-streaked face.  As he was wiping my tears, I saw with horror that his clean, crisp collared shirt was covered in my face paint. To be precise, there was an exact imprint of a miniature face pressed against the chest of his shirt.  I apologized, terrified at the mess I had made.  He looked down at his shirt and began to laugh.  "It's just a little paint, boo," he said.

Now, what was the point of my rambling of childhood memories? Well, for one, I had the best childhood, and I love to remember it. Secondly, I had and still have the best father ever and everyone should know it. Lastly, this memory has matured into my personal analogy for Christ over the years.

You see, when hardship falls on us, we only have to run to Christ, our father, and He will sit us in His lap.  He will wipe away our tears and listen to our troubles, no matter how big or small, as if they were the most important thing in the world. When we have been comforted, He will look down at His white robe and see the stains of the sins that we have left in His lap.  Then, He will look up at us and laugh and say "It's just a little paint."