GRADUATION IS ALMOST HERE

After every major disaster some enterprising entrepreneur floods the clothing market with "I survived the ...." T Shirts. We don't wear survival T shirts, but my wife and I survived a marriage crisis and in terms of sheer panic, I've never been through anything worse. We have both witnessed a destructive tornado up close and personal, and we lived with three teenagers in the house at the same time, which some people would say amounts to the same thing. I'm convinced that a marriage mess is scarier than an IRS audit, the prospect of incarceration, and the peril of performing trapeze stunts without a net.

Eighteen years ago we struggled through a gut wrenching domestic crisis which stopped just short of divorce. I thought I had swallowed a baseball - at least I think it was like swallowing a baseball, although I have never actually ingested one. Bouts of insomnia befell me nightly and I often arose at four in the morning to clean the garage just to keep from going nuts. Our garage has never been so orderly. My appetite disappeared and I lost 25 pounds in just a couple of weeks. If you are thinking about precipitating a marriage crisis to lose weight, take my advice and forget it.

About this time the valve on our dishwasher stuck open while we were away from the house and flooded the kitchen and den. Dealing with a flooded house is about as much fun as suffering with a ruptured appendix, but within a week we had the valve repaired, the carpet dried and restretched and the odor was eliminated. Well, the odor was almost eliminated; at least we could stand it. Cleaning up the mess on a water soaked carpet is a piece of cake compared to getting our damaged relationship back on track.

We learned that cleaning up a domestic mess demands honesty from both parties, an honesty that includes accepting the painful truth about our own contributions to the deterioration of our relationship. Like most people we both preferred not to "do" pain, but that's the price of reconciliation. Trying to shift the blame from your own shoulders to those of your spouse merely advances the hostility level and resolves nothing. Healing our fractured relationship was incredibly painful, but a divorce would have been even more painful for us, for the children and for our peace of mind. We chose the harder path because we take the Bible seriously when it says, "What God therefore hath joined together, let not man put asunder" (Matthew 19:6). We chose to face the truth, accept the pain and climb the long hill that led us to mend our messed up marriage and we're glad we did.

"I feel the "What Ifs" - guilt"

ANSWER.

People usually feel guilty for one of two reasons. (1) Sometimes we experience true guilt. True guilt means we have done something we shouldn't have or failed to do something we should have done and we feel guilty about it. (2) Then we sometimes feel "false guilt." False guilt means we feel guilty either because someone dumped a guilt trip on us or because of an overly sensitive conscience. It's very important for you to determine whether you're feeling true guilt or false guilt.

If it's false guilt, it helps to be able to recognize it as false guilt, to consciously tell yourself that you are not guilty and to make a conscious decision to no longer act as a guilt ridden person. That won't automatically take the guilt feelings away, but if you keep doing it over and over again, eventually they will leave.

If you're dealing with true guilt, then you need to change whatever you can change and accept the things you can't change. Many years ago, when I lived in Iowa, an old gentlemen in the church I worked with committed suicide. We were in the midst of an incredible cold snap. Three days before he committed suicide, I saw him knock on the door at the house across the parking lot form my office. I later learned that he was concerned because of ice melting and coming inside his house. When I saw him there, I thought about going out on the parking lot and talking with him. But I didn't do it. It was twenty degrees below zero and I couldn't see any point in going out an having a neighborly chat on the parking lot. That was the last time I saw him. I felt guilty about that. The truth is that a visit with him might not have made any difference at all. And even if it did, I cannot undo that. I just ask God's forgiveness and I rest in the assurance that God said, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (Hebrews 8:12)

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NEXT WEEK'S STUDY OUTLINE - "False Assumptions About Marriage"