GUILT IS A MANY SPLINTERED THING
Guilt is a powerful emotion that can delay the grief process and makes you feel prickly inside. Guilt can invade your sense of peace and splinter into negative thoughts. Perhaps guilt came from something you did or something you didn’t do, or from a decision you made on behalf of your loved one that continues to plague you. Guilt keeps you trapped inside the “what ifs” in life.
Every decision we make is based upon the information we have at any given time. That movement forward in time can change how we think about something because time gives us more perspective, more information, or a greater awareness or realization of what we did or didn’t do. Guilt can be a positive emotion because it allows us to think about our actions and teaches us how to do something differently the next time. Guilt can also be negative because we can get stuck in it and our guilt keeps us from forgiving ourselves and moving ahead with our lives.
If you are feeling guilty, take the time to think about what you feel guilty about. Write down how that guilt has powered your thoughts so that you can see your guilt in black and white. Next, pray about what you feel guilty and ask God to open you up and help you release your guilt by forgiving yourself for what did or didn’t happen. It also allows us to better understand difficult circumstances that happens to others and forgive them as well. After all, in the Our Father prayer, God taught us that we need to forgive our own trespasses, as we forgive others their trespasses. Your loved one has already forgiven you and released you of your guilt. They are living guilt-free in eternity. So should you.
“As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” Psalm 103:12
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Photo by Chaplain Mary

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