The Gift of Guilt (09/06/2025)

In the fall of 1971, I found myself in the Twin Cities area with my husband and infant daughter. We moved there so he could pursue his master’s degree. At the same time, my oldest sister, Betty relocated to the area with her husband who was pursuing his degree in anesthesia along with their one-year-old. My sister, Betty, and I discovered the gift of guilt that fall.

Growing up, I idolized my older sister. I saw her as someone who did no wrong. I wanted to be like her so much, but the more I tried to imitate her, the more I came off as a poor imitation. And over time the tension between us grew. When I found myself in the Twin Cities feeling so isolated and alone, knowing my big sister was less than an hour away, I wanted to reach out, but that tension was tugging me back. And I realized it was guilt for letting jealousy color our relationship. And so, I reached out to her ironically at the same time she had decided to reach out to me for the same reason. Come to find out, she’d been jealous of me for what she saw as courage to be myself, to be different.

We got together. We apologized, we hugged, we cried, we laughed. And we never let anything get between us again. We’d both been taught by the good Franciscan Sisters of Allegany, New York in our small St. Joseph’s Academy in Waycross, Georgia that guilt was a gift from the LORD, it was a nudge from the Spirit to show us where we’d been wrong and to encourage us to correct course and mend fences with our LORD and with one another. We’d been taught that guilt isn’t a place one dwells but rather a turning point where one reorients oneself to stay on course for this lifelong journey.

I recently had cause to remember these parts of my journey as I sought to accompany another. And after our conversation, I found myself sitting for the longest time, talking to the LORD and believing my sister Betty could hear from her place nearby. I thanked the LORD for the gift of guilt that launched my understanding of my missteps and for the Spirit’s gift of a desire for reconciliation that hatched my desire for a right relationship with my sister that brought me so much love and so much joy. And I thanked the LORD for the good sisters who taught me that guilt was a tool of conversion used by the LORD to draw our minds and hearts and souls to needed change for our own sake and for reconciliation with the LORD and one another.

As we journey through this life on our way to our hoped for life in abundance with our LORD and our loved ones, let us commit to understanding that guilt is a gift from the LORD used to help us reconcile, to help us turn away from previous behavior we recognize to be unloving, and to turn toward good and loving relationships with our LORD and one another. Let us use it as it meant to be used, a spiritual turn signal. Let us promise that we will not dwell on it or in it, for that was never it’s purpose.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.