Guilt Gone Good

Do you have holes in your heart from moments when you could have done the right thing and didn't? Or when someone treated you badly for no reason and you thought it was something you did wrong?

A friend of mine (the '˜one that got away') and I had lunch 32 years after the fact. I poured my heart out to him about the guilt I bore alone for letting go of the love he entrusted me with. Something stupid happened with my mother and I took a deep dive off the shallow end of the pool.

Regret is a natural part of life. Humans do that and there is nothing wrong with, I don't give a dang what Oprah says. But regret is one thing, and guilt is another. Guilt punishes forever and never lets up.

Years earlier, when I informed him of my erroneous action and the result of it, there was nothing but forgiveness in his heart. "We can make this work." There was a sacred moment of godliness in that one act of forgiveness that made me feel even more guilty. It crawled across my skin like a slithering dark snake, choked the life out of me, and would not let go.

If he could forgive me that and "make it work," he was too good to be with me anyway. My mother had said so, and there was nothing and no one around to make me disbelieve it. I was 17 and figured it must be true. I was looking at the drugs and alcohol in her instead of the love in him.

A young man plans his life around a young woman who lets him down and he forgives her? Forgives her to the point where he keeps calling for six months after the "incident" happens before he finally gives up? Guess I was one of the lucky ones, but in all fairness, I could not ruin his life just because I ruined my own. It wasn't fair to him, and he was really one of the good guys.

But -- I have lamented over it enough.

We went back and forth talking, and the gist of the conversation was that I was divorcing husband No. 3 and he had just married Wife No. 3. One long-term marriage and two short-term ones, just like me. He listened intently and when I finished talking, he asked, "Well, did you learn anything?"

Honestly, no.

I did not learn one single thing from that mistake except regret. And no matter how human an urging it is, it is true that it doesn't help matters. However, the guilt lasted 32 years and he never said what I needed to hear: "I forgive you."

I couldn't help but wonder, though, if the reason for both of our many failed marriages was the fact that God had meant for us to be together from Day One and we just weren't going to make it work with anyone else. I made my peace without his words of release, however. I turned that guilt around and decided that what you can't take back and don't learn anything from, purge it anyway.

I never forgave myself for what happened between he and I. The sadness I wear on my face is now more than 30 years old and will probably never go away.

Besides my four sons, I had two other loves in my entire life. Tim and the job I had at the Ledger-Enquirer. I ensured my sons a horrific life just by making one fatal mistake with the wrong person at the wrong time, and it became cyclical...it cost me the job, too. And it killed my spirit and will to live.

But...maybe I did learn something.

Never mix blood with someone whose name means "weed." But the man the Lord gave me...his name meant "honoring God." I did not honor God at the time, and paid for it with my life.

The good news? I didn't give up on believing that I will be redeemed one day. Tick tock...