I’m a bunny killer. Last week when I was weeding in the asparagus I startled a baby bunny. I thought how bold that wascally wabbit mama was to nest right smack in my garden but I just kept pulling the tall grass and didn’t give them another thought. My garden is big enough that I can share. The deer are also frequent unwanted visitors volunteering to prune the tops of my tomato plants and beans.

A few days later when I was mowing in the paths between my raised beds it happened. I heard a big thud and knew I’d run over something, a dirt clod maybe? Until I saw the chunks of …well, I’ll spare the details. I instantly stopped the mower and went in the house. I went to the sink and got a drink of water and told Zeke what had happened.

Here’s the bad part. I made him go out and clean it up. He didn’t want to and we argued. I said it would gross me out and he said it would gross him out, too. I told him I just couldn’t do it and he said neither could he. I told him I knew he could and then, well, I basically guilted him into it. I didn’t say it, but I implied that this kind of task is one of those things that men must do for women. He said he was going to throw up… but he did it anyway. …I’m so ashamed.

Today when I was mowing again, I replayed this horrible scene in my mind again. I don’t think it was the hunks of bunny remains that I couldn’t deal with but the guilt of having done it that made me feel that I just could not go back out in my garden that day.

I let my stupid guilt over the killing, even this purely accidental thing, rule my behavior in the way I treated my son. It’s not that it hurt him to clean up the mess (nor would it have hurt me). I was selfish and threw away my values there for a minute. That scares me. I teach my sons about equality and that guys must carry their household load, too, and that women work in the world now and can do man-stuff, too. Then I revert to the weaker sex when it is easier to do so. It was one of those hypocritical, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do kind of things.

Guilt.

I hate it and I‘m not one that has much use for guilt generally. I let things go pretty easily …forgive myself and others, too, because I know God does. We are who we are. But now I’m thinking guilt can be a useful tool for change, can’t it? I learned a lesson here and it won’t happen again. Sometimes I think that is what life is about. The lessons.