“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are
agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent,
make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better
next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not
the best way of getting clean.”
—Aldous
Huxley, Brave New World
Parenting, from conception
throughout the entire process of journeying with our children, is a very
emotional role. Parenting involves us in the full gamut of emotions; from
ecstasy to agony and every shard and splinter of the shattered palate of affect
between.
Even unemotional types are drawn
in to bear their emotions as they parent (what parent has never become angry?).
From emotions comes the fragility of sensitivity for having done wrong. There
is no field of endeavour more laden with guilt than for thought of wrongdoing
as a parent. If we are to be better parents, better and more functional carers,
we need to address our guilt and have ways of debunking it.
This is where the Christian
journey intersects with guilt in the mode of parenting to provide a way forward
so we can become even better parents.
Central to the premise of
Christianity is the concept of repentance. And repentance is not just about
confession or ‘feeling guiltier’, but it is very much about 1) reparation of
the relationship, and 2) reparation of the soul, so we can move forward in
life.
Honouring Horrible Truths and Repentance
It is a fact that we all make
mistakes, and some very horrible ones, as parents.
If we allow that fact to sink
deeper into our consciousness, just now, and combine with it the idea that we
are/were just trying to do our best, we imagine a renewed sense of hope even in
the midst of the horrible truth—we could have done better; much better in
certain cases.
Granted that we have made some
horrible mistakes, some perhaps which have caused our children to struggle and
suffer, we can still do something about it. But the first step is
acknowledgement.
Most people who have been
transgressed simply want to be acknowledged as having been transgressed. And in
that mode of acknowledgement is the opportunity to convey how bad we really
feel. This is the objective of
guilt—to take us into repentance. Guilt has no further function than to take us
to repentance—to make amends as/if best we can.
Now, Moving On
God blesses us in a wonderful way
when we have truly repented—in this case by acknowledging our wrongdoing and
making amends the best we can.
We sense the burden has lifted
from our shoulders. There is a new spring in our step. We enter each bright new
day with a pinging hope. There is about us a sense of delimitation. We feel
capable and competent. Our confidence returns.
Once guilt has been dealt with we
can move on into the broader scope of life in order to see life as God wants us
to see it.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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