The Answer for Guilt
My tears mingled with the wet morning dew soaking through my jeans as I knelt beside my Son’s week-old grave that frigid March morning. I Uncontrollable weeping made it impossible to lift my head from my hunched-over position as I stared down at the grass receiving my tears. I was crying not only for the depth of the loss of my twenty-three-year-old but for another dimension of the tragedy. I was mourning because of my guilt.
I could feel my insides dissolving as I contemplated never being able to explain, confess, or try to heal the breach in our relationship. I knew it had pained his young life for the past several years since I divorced his Mother. Now my haunted conscience was filling with torments about my shortcomings like rats infesting a dark cold basement.
The hopelessness of him being gone, mocked my naïve belief that someday we’d be restored as father and son to the joy of a functional relationship. I had suspended trying to reach out, presumptuously thinking that “time heals all wounds.” Now that was never going to happen. Instead, things would forever remain the same as they were when he left this world. He was hurt, hurt by his Dad. And I would forever be accountable for harming the precious young soul of my beloved son.
I was terrorized by guilt knowing that “I owed” but I could never pay. I was guilt’s hostage and the ransom was impossible. I became strengthless by the irreversible condemnation. I’m in hell, I thought. Isn’t irreversible hopelessness the essence of what hell is? I collapsed with my face in the wet ground.
I felt what Judas felt when death became his only way out. My weeping turned to heaves of wailing, and I cried out loud, “Oh God, I hurt him!”
Then I experienced something so profound that I have never been the same since. The guilt left me. I can’t explain it any better than that. The sense of owing was gone, totally, suddenly. Somehow, I knew I would not have to pay for what I did. I now owed nothing, and my spirit told me so by the flood of peace that replaced the sickening heaviness that was there an instant before. It was like poison had just been purged from my system.
Understanding immediately followed. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” fired across my mind. It was a completely subjective experience, but one that’s defined for us in God’s Word, 1Jn.1:9. I was free, and I have remained free without any sense of guilt since that moment. I had experienced the answer for guilt: God takes it away!
Many Adjustments
In the year that followed, there would be many such adjustments in the long ordeal of the mourning process. Like the first birthday without him, each Holiday, and the first time I realized my new identity. I had now become, and would forever be, “a parent that had lost a child.”
Each of these first-time, “secondary tragedies” has its own involuntary seizure of disabling grief. These are the surprises in life that you thought could never happen to you. But with each one, I experienced the same perfect consolation from God. It was clear, He lost a Son too and His presence was there by His Spirit to personally share His comfort.
It’s His profound nearness that sustains us through unbearable challenges. “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me.”
I understand now how someone like Mother Teresa or Saint Vincent could do what they did in those deplorable conditions. I told someone during those times, “if God was this close, I could face anything, even the martyr’s sword.”
Thankfully, the guilt matter had been deferred until that day at the gravesite because when I faced it, it crushed me. Guilt evicts the rational mind, forcing it out with its selected images, memories, and constant reliving of torturous regrets that are impossible to change or dismiss.
Guilt can kill you.
Confirmation
As I was finally able to rise to my feet, and I walked away from my son’s grave, I could sense that something had changed. I was different. Things even looked different.
I got into my car to leave, and as I started it, the CD automatically came on that I had purchased the day I got the news that Chris had been tragically killed in a car crash. Sheila Walsh’s “Throne of Grace,” played and perfectly articulated what I had just experienced. It was as if God was speaking to me in confirmation.
I know you, I know you completely, and on your darkest journey, I have been with you.
All the weight of guilt and shame, you carry on your shoulder,
it’s time to hand it over
and let it go,
just let it go.
Come to the throne of Grace.
Don’t be afraid, I won’t turn you away.
Just let me into your heart,
and my love will wash your tears away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=533Su74doDU
No Answer for Guilt
The unbelieving world does not have the answer for guilt. Modern counseling and psychology does not have the answer for guilt. Neither did Dr. Freud. Like pharmaceuticals, these can only treat guilt’s symptoms.
But God does have the answer, and it’s not only available, it’s promised, “if we confess our sins…” (1Jn.1:9 NAS). Clearly stated, the answerer for guilt is, God takes it away. “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” “All,“ includes guilt.
Our Part
Once He does, what remains is our part. As Sheila Walsh so beautifully says it, “it’s time to hand it over, and let it go, just let it go.”
Our part is to just let it go!