No need for guilt trips

Have you ever felt guilty for making a mistake?

Have you been made to believe by others that you’re the family “can’t get it right” and deserving of ridicule?

Most of us do something now and then that we wish we’d done differently, but our freedom from the heavy-laden guilt trip is remembering that God loves us no matter what.

God is a forgiving God, and we experience that forgiveness as we rectify our ways and work to improve our thoughts and actions. Others may give us a hard time for our errors, but chances are, they have their own bundle of errors to rectify too. It’s best that we all love and support each other more, rather than condemn and criticize.

I chuckled when I read this story sent to me today:

While on a road trip, an elderly couple stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. After finishing their meal, they left the restaurant and resumed their trip.

When leaving, the woman unknowingly left her glasses on the table and she didn't miss them until they had been driving about twenty minutes.

By then, to add to the aggravation, they had to travel quite a distance before they could find a place to turn around -- in order to return to the restaurant to retrieve her glasses.

All the way back, the husband became grouchy and critical of her wife’s oversight.

He fussed and complained and scolded his wife relentlessly during the entire return drive.

The more he chided her -- the more agitated he became. He just wouldn't let up one minute. To her relief, they finally arrived at the restaurant.

As the woman got out of the car and hurried inside to retrieve her glasses, her husband yelled to her, "While you're in there, can you get my hat and the credit card too?"

Enough said.

We all have room to improve. It’s best we forgive more and criticize less. Everyone will be much happier, and we won’t risk winning the label of being a hypocrite!

Don't feel guilty for saying no

Three days ago, I had a friend who is moving out of town, call and ask if I wanted any of the multitudes of religious and spiritual books she needed to get rid of. She didn’t want to throw them away, and wondered if I could take them off her hands.

I’ve had people make these requests before, and often I’ve obliged them, figuring somebody might want the books and I’d be happy to pass them along, and I wanted to be helpful anyway. But honestly, I have many books already sitting in my backroom, unused, and I didn’t need to add anymore! I needed to "clean house" myself!

In my efforts to be helpful, though, I have found it hard in the past to turn away people who are trying to be generous.

And what happens? I end up with someone else's junk...and thus the stacks of old books in my backroom!

But this time, I got a new view. I realized that if I accepted the volumes under the pretense that I could make good use of them, when I could not, I was being dishonest. I was being dishonest to myself and to the giver, and this was evil no matter how you look at it.

Aw…huge relief.

I did not have to accept the books. I did not have to let her feeling of burden become a burden for me. And I didn’t have to pretend like I was passing on a great opportunity. I could politely thank her for thinking about me, turn down the offer, and trust she would find a place for the books, or simply chuck them in the garbage and proceed with her move.

And that’s what I did.

In response, she thought a bit more, and realized she could donate the books to the local library annual book sale.

Perfect! I thought. No imposition on anyone there.

It's such a little revelation, but not feeling guilty about saying no to unwanted stuff was a minor breakthrough for me. The rule applies to mental junk mortal mind wants to load onto our thinking too. We need to say No! when we don't want it. It works, and it’s the honest way to live.

“Be honest, be true to thyself, and true to others; then it follows thou wilt be strong in God, the eternal good.” Mary Baker Eddy, Rudimental Divine Science, p. 8.