We have a no-guilt God

Good morning and Happy Easter!! God is good all the time!

The last 4 weeks have been a time of healing from a lumbar spine disc replacement with 2 fusions and I don't know when I have felt more isolated. Which appears to be exactly how and where God wants me.

This down-time of has given me time to dwell on past choices and experiences, not in the manner of Lot's wife in bemoaning what I have lost, but in the interactions of others in what I could have done better.

For example... the similar back surgeries my mom went through. I can now appreciate how debilitating the recovery is. I ruminated on how I tried to be the supportive daughter in being with her as much as I could as I worked and lived 4 hours away. When I couldn't be with her, I sent flowers with cheery notes. When we talked I encouraged her to walk more than just a couple of trips around the dining table. After all, they say exercising even in the pain has to be done. This advice hit me now like a cold slap of water as I now I walk around my kitchen island.

This slap of reality allowed me to continue to wallow through what I could have, should have, would have, done better by her led the door to open to guilt. And I was flooded with it. I cried out "JESUS!" And the Holy Spirit stepped in and reminded me that guilt is not of God.

On a sidebar here... have you ever noticed that the Holy Spirit never speaks or refers to the enemy? But only of God?

Anyways then, as I bemoaned to Jesus my then lack of compassion, The Holy Spirit showed me I had exhibiting fea over compassion. And so I gave the guilt to the cross of Jesus and asked Him to take it in accordance to 1 Peter 2:24, as Jesus personally carried the burden of our sins in his own body on the cross, to free believers from sin so they may live in righteousness and to do as I could and realize that mom chose to lean on others for reasons that had little to do with me.

It's a hard lesson to accept that the tragedies that others experience cannot always be earthly fixed. No good intended advice can land always on their circumstances to help. No warnings can always prevent. Our paths to heaven are what they are and it is what it is. To get there we need to lean on Jesus.

Happy Easter! He is risen. For you. And me.