freedom from regret, guilt, and shame

"When you combine a passive guy and an assertive gal, there will be far more than underwear and dishes to wash.  You'll also have a build up of anger or rage to disinfect, a diminished intimacy to cleanse and restore, a loss of trust to reestablish and renew.  And much more."  -Paul and Sally Coughlin, Married But Not Engaged.   FAIL.


Losing mh and living in the reality of a failed marriage is by far the deepest sorrow and greatest regret I've known.  Loss, grief, regret, guilt, and shame have been constant companions of mine these past months, and so I was thankful for my friend, Alice's, teaching this summer.. a gift of grace from the Divine for me one particular morning.  I had not even been able to sit through a full worship service since Christmas without having anxiety overwhelm me to the point of needing to leave the room.  But on this particular day, I stayed through every last powerful word for my soul.  

If you are stuck in the sludge of regret, guilt, shame, be reminded today with this sermon below that we are invited to receive forgiveness and freedom by way of the work done by Jesus, not us, on the cross.  

https://soundcloud.com/ohchurch/greatest-hits-regret-alice-shirey?in=ohchurch/sets/greatest-hits


"We mess up, we sin, and we then give in to this belief that we've messed up so badly that our sin now defines us.  That we are somehow beyond grace, and we refuse Jesus's offer of forgiveness....We flat out say, 'I want guilt and shame to eat at me for the rest of my life.  I'm really interested in self-crucifixion."  -Alice Shirey

"The choice to extend forgiveness is God's.  The choice to live in the power of that forgiveness is up to us." -Alice Shirey

“Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace. Our approach to the Christian life is as absurd as the enthusiastic young man who had just received his plumber’s license and was taken to see Niagara Falls. He studied it for a minute and then said, “I think I can fix this.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

“May a merciful God preserve me from a Christian Church in which everyone is a saint!  I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the fainthearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins.”  -Martin Luther