First of all, I would encourage you to find a Christian counselor to share this issue with. He or she would help you discover where the feels of guilt come from. I am a pastor, but not a trained counselor.

However, I will share some ideas and suggestions.

• Guilt usually arises from unfulfilled expectations. It would be helpful to review what your expectations are of being a wife, student, mother, and child of God. Perhaps they are not realistic. Possibly you are seeking to copy someone else’s expectations. God calls you to be yourself. In my extensive study of biographies, I have discovered that many people are not as “perfect” as they appear, but they make others feel guilty! Remember that Jesus said that His “yoke is easy and His burden is light” (Mt 11:28). For one reason or another many of us develop a perfectionist approach to our lives that may actually be inverted pride – our desire to impress others with how superior we are, when God’s desire is that we depend on Him and be just “normal!”

• Another focus is the difference between what Satan does and what the Holy Spirit does. If we have sinned, the Holy Spirit touches very specifically what we have done so that we can repent, change our way of acting, and know the Lord’s forgiveness. In contrast, Satan just wants us to feel bad, defeated, and inadequate so that we are stymied in our actions, and perhaps even give up, saying “Oh what’s the use of trying to serve God, I’m just a bad person.”

I would encourage you to take a retreat day and analyze your life before the Lord. Ask Him to search your heart. As David prayed, “Search me oh God and know my heart, try me and know my ways, and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps 51).

You may also be suffering from just plain fatigue. Are you getting enough rest? Are you taking a Sabbath each week to rest and seek the Lord?

May the Lord Himself meet you, Heather, and lead you out of your depression. He loves you, made you, and knows what you need. But He also uses counselors who are trained and wise.