when guilt is a coin.....
Guilt as defined by Wikipedia says this: Guilt is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes-accurately or not-that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation it is closely related to the concept of remorse.
Today I am feeling guilt because I chose to stay home tonight with the little people and Isaac who isn't feeling well, and not going to support Claire's sophomore soup supper and watch her dance at half time. I feel guilty for sending Jeremiah to a different ball game with another family and not taking him myself. I feel guilty I choose to go to these events and either haul the little kids along and suffer under their misery, getting home too late, not taking care of the dogs.....
Guilt is a beast.
Yesterday I consoled a new mom who was feeling guilty about her situation and I told her that a healthy dose of guilt comes with parenting. If you are feeling guilty about something, it comes from a place of wanting to do more, be more, give more, invest more so that our children can have the best of the best. I usually feel like the parents who are feeling "guilty" about something are being good parents......remorse isn't the enemy. Hopefully it grows us into better humans, both as parents and as children who will one day also be parents.....
I could make a nice long list of everything I feel guilty about....and so can anyone else....but is that really the point or does that just grow the guilt? I guess, for tonight, I need to put my big girl pants on and accept the choice that I made, to stay home on this frigid January night, with children who are too small to need to be at ball games when they don't even watch the ball game......and own up to the fact that I chose to have a family of children with a 13 year age range and someone always comes up short. I can pray that the benefit out ways the sacrifices we all make here every day. Tonight, I pray that my big kids will be forgiving.
Guilt is something I don't want to ever just accept, or deny. I want to hold it in my hand like a heavy coin that is worth something, and yet mysterious, with lots of unanswered questions. I want to turn it around for a bit, study it from all angles......and then just invest it in something, setting it down.
For today, I invested it in this blog and for tonight I am setting it down.
Today I am feeling guilt because I chose to stay home tonight with the little people and Isaac who isn't feeling well, and not going to support Claire's sophomore soup supper and watch her dance at half time. I feel guilty for sending Jeremiah to a different ball game with another family and not taking him myself. I feel guilty I choose to go to these events and either haul the little kids along and suffer under their misery, getting home too late, not taking care of the dogs.....
Guilt is a beast.
Yesterday I consoled a new mom who was feeling guilty about her situation and I told her that a healthy dose of guilt comes with parenting. If you are feeling guilty about something, it comes from a place of wanting to do more, be more, give more, invest more so that our children can have the best of the best. I usually feel like the parents who are feeling "guilty" about something are being good parents......remorse isn't the enemy. Hopefully it grows us into better humans, both as parents and as children who will one day also be parents.....
I could make a nice long list of everything I feel guilty about....and so can anyone else....but is that really the point or does that just grow the guilt? I guess, for tonight, I need to put my big girl pants on and accept the choice that I made, to stay home on this frigid January night, with children who are too small to need to be at ball games when they don't even watch the ball game......and own up to the fact that I chose to have a family of children with a 13 year age range and someone always comes up short. I can pray that the benefit out ways the sacrifices we all make here every day. Tonight, I pray that my big kids will be forgiving.
Guilt is something I don't want to ever just accept, or deny. I want to hold it in my hand like a heavy coin that is worth something, and yet mysterious, with lots of unanswered questions. I want to turn it around for a bit, study it from all angles......and then just invest it in something, setting it down.
For today, I invested it in this blog and for tonight I am setting it down.
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