The Burden of Guilt

Welcome to Joni and Friends where I love talking about my friends! 

My friends like – well, like Martha. We are such good buddies and have been so for years, but we sure weren’t friends in the beginning. You see, I met Martha at one of our Family Retreats years ago when she and her family arrived for the first time. The first day, I noticed Martha standing off at a distance, just watching her little boy, Joseph, zipping around in his wheelchair. Although her husband and other children were fitting right in to the Family Retreat, Martha seemed so sad and disconnected from all the fun. And I soon found out why.  

You see, Martha was the one who was driving the car that night when she fell asleep at the wheel. When the car flipped in the ditch by the side of the road, Joseph, who was in the back seat, took the brunt of the impact, suffering a spinal cord injury. It had only been a year or two earlier, but Martha, there at our Family Retreat, was still suffering from guilt and regrets. She felt that she was the one totally responsible that Joseph, her youngest son, was now paralyzed, and she just could not forgive herself. It didn’t help that she was around so many other children with disabilities; they only served as a reminder of the strange and uncomfortable world that she and her family now found themselves in. Martha knew Jesus Christ, but still, she was wrestling with that question: “Why me? Why my family?” 

The second day at Family Retreat was the same. Joseph and his brothers were having a blast, but Martha, she still kept her distance from getting involved. All that changed, however, when she decided to attend the woman-to-woman session that afternoon. Sitting there in a big circle with other mothers, Martha listened as one woman confessed guilt over having opted for a surgical procedure for their son – a procedure that was botched. Then another opened her heart in tears, expressing regret that she and her husband decided to go ahead with a certain new medicine for their child’s seizures, but the medicine backfired. Another mother dabbed her eyes as she wished she hadn’t left out those poisonous insecticide bottles that her child got into and now had a brain injury.  

As Martha took it all in, she realized that she was just like these women. Her circumstances with Joseph were exactly the same, and she realized that she did not need to carry that burden of guilt and regret anymore. There was no need to keep asking the question, “Why me?” From then on out, Martha embraced the grace of the Lord Jesus in a fresh new way and invited him to show her his plan for Joseph and their family. And now many years later? Well, Martha and her boys are topnotch volunteers – even Joseph. All of them love serving at Family Retreat where they can minister to newcomers who, like them at one time, arrived asking the question, “Why me?” and “Why my family?”  

Now, you may not have suffered a car accident and your children may not have a disability like Joseph’s, but you could be asking God “Why?” for some other tragedy or suffering. If so, let us pray for you at Joni and Friends. Our staff meets every morning to lift up your prayer requests, so tell us your prayer needs at joniradio.org. Again, that’s joniradio.org, where we share hope through every hardship. Oh, and what answer did God give Martha? Well, she now looks at her son in his wheelchair and points to John 9 and says, “This happened that the works of God might be displayed.”  

© Joni and Friends