Category Archives: church

Which Kind of Guilt?

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I have to admit I didn’t want to attend church last Sunday. If Darren hadn’t been so determined, I would have found 100 excuses not to go. I told myself it was because I was just tired, and I needed Sunday to be a real day of rest.

But God called my bluff 2 minutes into the service, and kept them coming through the whole morning. Our worship leader talked about how God wanted our worship time to simply be about giving and receiving God’s love. And my heart was refusing, with walls up a mile high. Why? Because I have been so easily frustrated with my girls lately, and I wanted to beat myself up for it a bit longer. If I opened my heart to receive God’s love, I would have to forgive myself and accept His forgiveness. And I didn’t want to.

The worship leader talked about how her little girl came up during worship practice and for no reason simply said “I love you Mommy!” and then ran off, and how deeply it touched her as an example of how our spontaneous love touches God’s heart. I was still refusing. Still stewing in my own muck.

Amara had started feeling sick on the drive to church (another reason not to go, I argued), so she was cuddled on my lap instead of in children’s church. Suddenly she reached up and whispered in my ear, “Mommy, I love you so much. Even when you get frustrated, I love you. You are the best mommy in the WHOLE world. And I love you even when you have owies on your face.” (owies are the zits my face produced – mistakenly thinking I am 14, not almost 40). And just as suddenly Jesus whispered in my other ear “If this little girl, who’s feelings you hurt this morning – if she can forgive and still love you… why do you think so little of my love? Why would you block out my love and forgiveness and refuse me?”

And my heart broke. My walls came down. Even though I knew the walls were hurting me and those around me, I still wanted to keep them there. I envisioned my children doing the same to me. If they had made a mistake – even a really big mistake… if they put those walls up and refused me to forgive them, how it would hurt me! And ultimately mostly hurt themselves.

God brought to mind another church service, months earlier; so I scrolled through the notes on my phone and found them, each point jumping out at me.

They read like this:
~Guilt really attaches us to the past
~Guilt is the biggest barrier to Christian growth
~True sorrow leads to life, worldly sorrow leads to spiritual death

2 Corinthians 7:10 (NLT)  For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.

~Godly guilt leads us to God
~There should be no regret for the past because that isn’t me. I am free!
~Worldly sorrow has much to do with pride
~It attacks who you are
~We must let go of how we want people to think of us and embrace who we are in God
~Guilt chokes the life out of you instead of drawing you closer to God
~Sort through your guilt. Trash the worldly guilt and embrace Godly sorrow
~Sorrow is a miracle. Don’t shy away from it or hide from it. Examine it and embrace Godly sorrow.

I had arrived steeped in guilt; sitting in that theatre seat where we do church. I left feeling full of hope and forgiveness.

I know I am not the only woman to feel this: this overwhelming load of guilt. I am not the only mother who has bad days (more than we would like to admit – even to each other) where we don’t parent the way we want to. Where we aren’t the wives we wish we could be, or the friend that we feel we are needed to be. There is guilt on every side, threatening to swallow us up.

My challenge to myself this week is to take a moment to categorize my sorrow before allowing the emotions of it to run away with me. Is it a Godly sorrow that leads to repentance and change? Is there any change that needs to happen, or is it simply a guilt I am heaping upon myself because I want people to think differently of me? If I am drowning in worldly guilt – how can I stop, take note of it and decide what to do with it? Do I need to just cast it off, or is there something I can allow God to use to bring change in me?

I am determined to not let my past mistakes with my kids, determine our future. Even though I know I will make many more and I will never be a perfect parent, I am determined to be a parent who teaches my kids how to move through mistakes. How to pick ourselves up, brush off the worldly guilt, and cling to our God. I’m so thankful God didn’t allow me to be stuck in my guilt, but used my sweet, forgiving little girl to teach me an incredible lesson.

Even though I often feel that being a parent brings out the worst in me, and that I wonder if there isn’t a better person for this job – my children humble me by their love for me. And one way I will love them back is by not letting myself be beat down by this guilt that paralyzes, that brings hardness and anger to my heart.

So now that I have written a post about it, I must have this figured out right? WRONG! This will be a post I will need to revisit often because my memory is so short. As a sweet friend said to me one day “Go back and read your own blog – there’s some things in there you need to learn again”. I will add this one to my list.

Amazing…!!!

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Can I just say that we are blessed? Our community of friends and our church community have rallied around us in regards to Giselle’s adoption in such amazing ways!

In February I went to our church women’s retreat. I hadn’t planned on going, but my friend Leesila badgered me into it – and I’m so thankful that she did! That was at the height of not knowing if we would be able to adopt Giselle and I was in a very dark place. I was asked to speak about what was happening in front of all the women there and then they prayed for me. And this wasn’t a very polite, everyone taking turns kind of praying. It was women on their knees wailing and lamenting and crying out to God for His mercy in this situation. It was a lot of tears and it was loud… it was amazing. Not only did I finally not feel alone in that struggle, I knew without a doubt that those prayers moved mountains in the spiritual realm.
Shortly after, Sharla asked if she could help me plan a fundraiser garage sale. Now, Sharla doesn’t do nice little garage sales that raise a couple hundred bucks. No, no my friends. At her adoption fundraiser sale, people were literally coming back every day to check out her new stock as she had so many donations coming in. She made thousands – yes, thousands of dollars at her sale! If I even make half of what she did, I will be dancing for joy in the streets. The date for our garage sale is June 2-4.  And yes – I’m accepting donations!
Recently, my friend Julie asked if she could help do a fundraiser for us through her photography. I am SO excited about this one, my friends! Julie is a talented photographer with a real heart for the orphan. She will do a photo shoot at a discounted rate with half of the proceeds going to our adoption costs. If you need to update your family photos, I humbly ask you to please consider this option? You can check out her work at www.papercastle.ca, and the blog post about our fundraiser here. You can email me personally for more information at nausfamily @ yahoo.com (no spaces).
And this is just crazy – A few weeks ago, I received a baby card congratulating us on being Giselle’s parents – with a cheque for 770.00 in it – the exact amount of one of our plane tickets to Haiti!!! Can you say confirmation that we are supposed to go on this trip? And let’s not forget my amazing parents – they used their airmiles to fly my mom here, risking the very real possibility that my dear Dad will drown all her newly planted seedlings… to look after my kids for the next 7 days. They are amazing.
The Sunday after we arrive home from Haiti, our church will do a spotlight on us. That means we will be on stage, presenting what we are doing, how the trip went, do a slide show – and they want to promote all our fundraisers :)
I asked our church if they would consider doing a fundraiser for the orphanage as the orphanage director would like to build a more permanent building (they are renting right now). I was thinking small – get the Sunday school kids involved in a little project. But no, they have decided to let us use our church (which is an old movie theatre) to host a family movie night! I’m so excited about this project and to see what God does. (date TBA)
And people, the thing I am most excited about is that not only does this help us immensely financially, and emotionally through this journey but it promotes adoption. It promotes it to my neighbours, my friends, my church family… and that gets me excited!! If even one more child finds a forever family through these promotions, it will be worth the extreme exhaustion I will be feeling after having 3 fundraisers in 3 weeks!