Notes on Grief and Guilt

In moments of grief, I often feel that I can see my heart inside my chest. I imagine it as a mess of bright red blood and dark caverns – of aching, throbbing pain and vacuous longing. And with the longing, there is a sickly sweet darkness that curls around my heart like wisps of toxic smoke: Guilt.

The brightness of the pain and the darkness of the guilt have been bound together there for as long as I can remember. I never questioned their fraternal relationship, because every new instance of grief seemed to invite more guilt. In noticing my thoughts, I have realized that the guilt comes as a suggestion (“you deserve this”), hovering above my conciousness, which I only half-believe but which I do not refute. I notice myself noticing the thought and sort of just watching as it sinks into my subconscious and becomes part of my beliefs about myself, adding another layer to the sticky sweet darkness around my heart.

There is a sort of sweetness about low self-esteem – this kind of guilt – or at least, something that feels sweet about it. Believing it’s my fault, that I deserve it, that my pain is just – gives me a sense of control over the pain. If I caused it, perhaps I can fix it. If I am receiving the pain because I deserve it, perhaps I can do something to not deserve it in the future. 

Whenever I realize that something is about control in my life, a red flag goes up for me: I know it is pride. Pride comes from believing in lies about the nature of my relationship with God or with other people. It seeks to crown me a god over my existence, rather than relying on the one, true God for everything – which is indeed the only sensible thing to do since He is the creator and sustainer of the universe, including my life.

With this sort of guilt, this low self-esteem, when I see those dark thoughts coming, I do not refute them because a part of me (pride) wants them to be true. I want to feel like, somehow, I could stop the pain, if I could only figure out what I was doing wrong.

The truth is that I cannot. Grief and loss are a part of life on earth and they always will be. It does not matter how good we are, there will always be pain. We live in a fallen world, and there are some longings in our hearts that will never be satisfied until heaven.

It is true that my own sins and the sins of those around me cause suffering – suffering that I experience in this life and/or the next. I do need to examine myself and find where I have been at fault. And then I need to process through those situations and look at the factors that pre-disposed me to sin: what wrong belief was I operating from? Was I tired? Was I angry? In processing through that, I need to make a commitment to myself that when I am weak, I will respect my weakness.

When I am weak, I need to go to God. When I am hurt or in pain, I need to go to God. When I am tired, I need to seek rest in God. I should not carry on, in pride, thinking that I can do it by myself. This almost always leads to bad choices. However, I shouldn’t look to my neighbor to make me strong and whole either. God is the only one that will always be there for me, that even can always be there, and it is not fair to expect constant, saving aid from any other person.

I am an especially hormonal woman, and it is not unusual for me to spend a few hours a week crying in my room to God. The pain comes and goes. But going to God with my sorrow, instead of looking for a solution or a distraction, is making the darkness in my heart evaporate. In its place, I see a bright pat of gold.

I do recognize that having a flesh-covered hand to hold, though no more “real” than God, can help with healing tremendously. This is part of the reason why we go to a priest for Confession, not merely confessing our sins before God. The Incarnation, God become Man, gives us permission, in a way, to need other people. It also exhorts us to use our hands (given to us by God) to hold others. But the point is that we humans have limitations, and though we should accept love and grace from each other as freely as we give it, we cannot truly rely on anyone but Christ. This is really what worship means: acknowledging the one who saves you. Other people do help us, including the saints, but no one can save us except Christ.

Sometimes, even when we’re trying to let God take care of us with our present lives, the guilt we feel for past sins can be crippling. God is just, but there is a difference between believing: “I did a bad thing,” and “I am a bad person.” If we are sincerely seeking God, we can be sure that He is doing His part to purify us and bring us through the effects of that sin that are still hanging around our souls. But humility demands that we look at ourselves and recognize that we are Good. That there is, in fact, nothing we can do that can put us beyond God’s mercy, except refusing to accept it. If God has mercy on us, then in humility, we should have mercy on ourselves. It is prideful to judge ourselves as bad people, when God himself does not.

This is humility: knowing the truth about ourselves. Knowing that we are Children of God and that on the one hand, we are infinitely inferior to Him, and that on the other, He loves us and desires to be with us anyway. True humility exonerates us of any sense of needing to earn God’s favor (we can’t), but it does compel us to treat ourselves, and everyone else, with the respect due to God’s creation.

If pride is about control (born of a lack of trust in God), then humility is about freedom (born from a trustful abandonment of ourselves to God’s providence). Knowing the truth about who God is and who we are sets us free to live in accord with the purposes He has planted deeply in our hearts. God has a plan for the universe and things go well when we live in accordance with that in our own lives. This is living in virtue. It does require sacrifice, but it bears fruit in self-respect.

When I notice those dark thoughts creeping in now, I tell them immediately to go away. “Get behind me, Satan.” I do not pause to consider if they have any truth in them, I do not give them the time of day. I just tell them firmly to Go Away. And then I pray: I pray that God will help me to know the truth about myself. I tell myself the truth with conviction: “I am good. I belong to God. I am good.” And I feel the little pat of gold expanding, warming and burning off the darkness around my heart, until it is a fine mist, whose shadows I can blow away with just a little puff of breath.