Get Free From Mom Guilt

In this post we will discuss how to get free from mom guilt.

If there’s one thing that steals mommy joy it has to be GUILT!

Guilt is one of those necessary emotions. While it seems negative, actually one of the best things we can do is to recognize our guilt before God an others.

In fact, the recognition of guilt is the first step towards wholeness, the wholeness included in the peace, or shalom, of God.

God’s kind of peace is not the world’s kind of peace. Jesus said:

Peace I leave you, My peace I give you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or fearful.
John 14:27

The word Jesus used here is in Greek “Eirene.” Some synonyms for this word are:

“one”
quietness
rest
prosperity
“set at one again”
health of soul
serenity

With this in mind, you could say that:

Peace means the completeness and prosperity of the entire person.

I read this in a Bible commentary on John 14:27:

So the peace of Christ leaves us the power to hold the wildest fear in pause, to still a clamour or hush a cry–it is the coming of mercy to a sense of sin, of life to the fear of death…there are moments when into one human word may be condensed the love of a lifetime.”

So…we discover our guilt, we confess, and then we gain that peace…

…or do we?

If I were to gather all of my readers and viewers into an auditorium and ask if any have been plagued by guilt, the place would be full of raised hands. In fact, I believe most of us live in a feedback-controlled world. We choose our action or non-action based on whether or not we “feel” guilty.

While men can easily be led by guilt, they are not as susceptible to it as women are. Women don’t even have to rely on “facts”–just how something makes us “feel.”

We refer to this as letting our conscience be our guide, but I would like to tweak that understanding a bit.

A conscience is not necessarily something God has meant for us to rely on for godly living.

To my understanding, a conscience is a device akin to a kitchen scale. I have one of these in my kitchen, which I don’t use often, but my daughter does. She is a barista and likes to measure her coffee grounds before adding them to her French press.

This particular scale has two options; it can either measure weight in grams or ounces, but I have to tell it which one to use.

The human conscience is also a measuring device, and we must tell it how we want it to measure our thoughts and actions. Usually, there are two forms of measurement we use:

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil
The law of life in Christ Jesus

The first measurement was born when Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden. Under this law we see thoughts and actions as either good or evil apart from God (as if they could be separate).

This is where most of our consciousness of what we call “sin” comes from. It is also where a lot of destructive religious dogmatism comes from.

At the root of this measurement scale is PRIDE.

The most proud, satan, considers himself to be a “good guy,” just misunderstood and not given a fair chance (there are cartoons for children giving this view of the devil).

This type of “good” wouldn’t mind a heaven without God as long as it was nice and everybody got along.

This was the good/evil understanding of the pharisees who crucified Jesus. They measured Him by their own consciences which had been trained by the law (through which the knowledge of good and evil had been exposed). They had spent ages feeling naked and then covering their own nakedness by pointing out the nakedness of everyone else!

Guilt from breaking this knowledge is relentlessly pernicious. It cannot help anyone do anything but point out transgression whenever it can be found–in one’s self and in every other person or system it finds.

This is the guiltiness that usually pursues us.

And, get this, it doesn’t necessarily have to do its job according to God’s standards. One’s conscience can be trained by false religions, by government propaganda, by books read, shows watched, and people consulted.

So, what we feel most guilty about and what we guilt others with most likely has nothing to do with the heart and truth of God at all.

This gets downright destructive. For instance, how many of us know a person who never misses a church service (even after giving birth), tithes regularly (and brags about it), fasts, volunteers, and yet is hateful, judgemental, and disagreeable?

Guilt based on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil does this to us, and often we don’t even realize it is happening.

But, there is good news!

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.
Romans 8:2

Do you want to know what God things of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the lives based on it? Check this scripture passage out:

For all of us have become like one who is unclean,

And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;

And all of us wither like a eaf,

And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
Isaiah 64:6

Romans 3:9-20 says we are all under sin–that not one of us is any different. Our actions and thoughts can never line up with the righteousness of God.

(By the way, those “filthy garments” referred to in Isaiah 64:6 mean soiled menstrual cloths…)

Our “goodness,” so-called, is nothing. Using the knowledge of good and evil as our standard does not keep us from guilt–only the life in Christ Jesus can do that. Only His love can save us, not our good actions.

Two Facts:

We are, by definition, GUILTY, bad, evil.
Nothing we try to do as “good” can change that.

So when we hear the accusers or our own consciences say we are bad, we can say, “THAT’S TRUE!” There’s no way we can make ourselves good, but:

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8

Before Christ, I was not a good person, but since Christ I am righteous because of who He is–the PERFECT son of God. And His bountiful, inexhaustible love covers my sins.

Brother Lawrence (of the book, The Practice of the Presence of God) said that whenever he was made aware of a sin in his life he would simply say, “You know, Lord, this is what I am without you,” and then go on walking with God.

The key is HUMILITY.

For this is what the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy says:

“I dwell in a high and holy place,

And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly

And to revive the heart of the contrite.
Isaiah 57:15

So, how can we keep from the trap of guilt?

By humbling ourselves, by admitting we don’t know how to do it right. Then by leaning entirely on HIS goodness.

That’s it.

We avail ourselves to Him, to listen to Him and share our lives, the “good,” and the “bad,” and then He lives with us.

We will automatically be doing “good” because He IS good and our conscience will be drowned out by His precious guiding voice.

What joy! What privilege!

Life in God is not how correctly we act or think, it’s about being scared little girls snuggled close to His heart–no guilt allowed.

For more on this subject, be sure and check out my podcast in the different places below: