I remember as a child waking up sniffling and sneezing and generally feeling yucky only to be told the answer to my sickness was glaringly obvious. “You went out in the cold yesterday without your hat…I told you so.” This statement from my dad was echoed many times throughout the years. Anytime I got sick, there was a reason. The reason was typically focused on what I did or did not do to encourage the wrath of the sickness monster. In other words, it was my own fault I had a cold, a sore throat, a stomach virus, etc… But was it though? Science doesn’t bare out your hypotheses, Dad. It could have been linked to my bare head in the winter wind, or it could have simply been germs. Still, even though I know the science of the cold and flu season, the thought still occurs to me when I wake feeling crummy. What did I do to cause this problem? Wrong? Likely. Irrational? Definitely.
We can cultivate general good health with nutrition, exercise, rest, and cleanliness. What we cannot do is prevent all forms of sickness. And if we have this guilt associated with every cold or flu we (and now our kids) experience, how many more areas of our lives does this control-driven angst permeate? Do we blame ourselves and others when difficulties and sickness and negative situations present themselves? Do we allow others to lay blame at our door and permeate our attitudes about ourselves and our abilities and value?
It usually isn’t done intentionally to bring pain or harm. Humans want to have a reason. We want to have the “why”? It helps us somehow to digest the difficult news, to allay our fears, and to give a name to the enemy. To think pain, sickness, devastation, and death could happen to just anyone without any reason is terrifying. Of course, it is! So we search for a scapegoat. Sometimes that scapegoat is thinking we should have known better or that someone else should have told us better. We blame ourselves. We blame someone else. Not in the loud, obnoxious finger-pointing variety of blame, but the quiet, gossipy kind of blame. You know the kind. “Well, you heard about so and so? We need to be in prayer for her because…” Gossip plain and simple. The blame game absolutely played out. Not surprisingly, this is nothing new. If you are familiar with the Bible, then you know the story of the man born blind who was healed by Jesus. Everyone wanted to know whose fault it was that he was born blind! Predictably, most folks blamed the parents. Typical.
I don’t have issues about wondering where my cold came from anymore, but I do fall into the blame trap over and over in other areas of my life, and so do you. For example, insomnia. I have always and forever had occasional bouts of insomnia. For years, friends have tried to help me solve the problem with herbal cures and suggestions. Is this wrong? absolutely not! It is kind and well-intentioned. However, it led to me taking the weight of guilt upon myself for not being able to sleep. Perhaps if I exercised at a different time or limited screens, or ate nuts before going to bed, or the most terrible suggestion of all…give up my beloved sweet tea…maybe then I could sleep. Only after medical tests confirmed a hormone imbalance, did I finally begin to let go of the idea that I was causing the problem. I guess they are MY hormones, but if you’ve ever tried to boss around your hormones then you know it’s a battle you may not win. So, in the end, yes, I can influence good sleep but not always fix the problem. It’s not my fault. It’s life. It’s human.
Then there is weight and body structure, umm basically saying getting fat. It’s an issue. It stinks. It happens more easily after children, at mid-life, during stress. When all those things combine, Lord help us! We look at people at the gym and make assumptions. If they’re “swoll” as my son likes to say, we assume they work out all the time and are super fit humans. If they are skinny, we assume they never struggle with self-image. If they are fat, we assume they don’t work out or are lazy. Assumptions. Wrong assumptions. We all know the saying, don’t judge a book by its cover, yet we still do it. And we judge ourselves. If only it were as simple as we like to think it is. Not all skinny people are healthy, and not all overweight people don’t work out. Health and wellness is a broad category and influenced by many things. We can eat right and exercise as much as our schedule allows yet still have rolls of fat around our middles and stupid cellulite clinging to our thighs. It stinks, but it’s life. It’s human.
Then there are the big issues, the painful fails we feel all the way to our very souls. Why is it we all assume that if we are “good” parents and raise “good” children, they will be “good” adults and make “good decisions? Well, sometimes. First of all, there is never a guarantee that good results follow good work. Secondly and most importantly, none of us could possibly be labeled “good” anyway. Kids make their own decisions and their own mistakes, thus learning their own lessons and winning their own battles in life. We, the parents are helpers most certainly. But at a certain point, we become spectators. God, Himself is the perfect parent, and His children fail at every turn. Is that His fault? No indeed. We have free will, which makes us responsible. So do our kids. Let it go, Momma. It is not your fault when things go wrong with your children. It’s life. It’s human. Your kids are human.
So what are the consequences of this guilt and blame scenario? It’s twofold. One, we harm ourselves by carrying a weight not ours to carry. Everything that happens to you is NOT your fault. Sometimes you make the best decision you can, and it turns out to be horribly wrong. Sometimes, you look back and think you should have known better. Don’t do it! Let it go and move on. I’m not telling you not to research and plan and pray and seek advice. By all means, do so. Try to solve your problems logically and realistically. But, realize you are uniquely you, whether that is a gal who has trouble sleeping, or sleeps like a log, loves to exercise or hates to exercise, struggles with her kids or feels they are near perfection. You cannot control your world. You really can’t. Realize what you can influence and do it; realize what you must accept and begin the process of doing that.
The other consequence of this guilt and blame associated with finding a reason “why” is that you bring harm to others. Whether it is intentional or not, when we lay the success of the failures of life completely on the abilities of others instead of understanding that sometimes…life just happens, we bring guilt and shame and blame. When you hear that someone is sick, don’t start searching for the reasons they got sick while you are the picture of health! Seriously, that is ridiculous and annoying. Take her soup and send her a get-well card. If you think her cold attacked her because of her bare-headed drive in a convertible, just smile and gift her a toboggan. A novel idea came to me one day, and it is this: you don’t have to say everything that comes into your mind. Resist the urge to know it all cause you don’t anyway.
That gal at the gym who really does hate exercising and barely made herself get on that treadmill might be suffering from depression or anxiety or any number of health issues. Give her a smile, not an uneducated assumption on how to fix her issues. Believe me, she needs it. And so do you. And that struggling momma of a rebellious teen, open up to her. Share your own issues, don’t tell me you don’t have them. When you share, she feels free to admit imperfection too. It’s not her fault. Oh, and keep the advice column to yourself. She doesn’t need instruction, she needs a listening ear and a hug. And most of all, don’t gossip. This sounds easy, but trust me when I say it is crazy hard to not show yourself to be “in” by knowing it all about everyone. Be the exception and keep your mouth shut and your heart in prayer.
In the end, our lack of sleep could be caused by too much sweet tea, Lord let it not be so, and our weight gain could be from too many donuts. Still, leave room in your life for the no-fault, no-blame, no-guilt realities of messy, imperfect life this side of Glory. Leave room for mercy and grace to come in, not just in your life but in the lives of all those around you, because friend, sometimes, it isn’t your fault. It isn’t hers either.