dailydatewithgod

One of the most unexpected outcomes of my daily prayer and meditation dates with God is an eye for the subtle yet profound ways in which the beauty of life presents itself in daily life.  Things that years ago would have completely escaped my attention now touch my heart and leave their mark.  I see it in the raw expression of emotion, even anger, in the sparkle in someone’s eye when they smile, or the pause someone makes in allowing me to step through a door before them.  It is a cherishing of the moment allowing me to be present to and capture the feeling of aliveness in my heart.  The more I see these kinds of things, the more I am convinced how much cherishing exists in the world.  The moments when the reality of life and all its facets shows itself unabashedly.  Reminders from a realm of love that is present all the time but we often miss.  The wonderful thing is it does not require a special set of eyes to see it, a special heart to be open to it or a special mind to believe it is there.  The profound opportunity to be cherishing of the moment we are in comes in the decision to take a breath, look up from our phone, and witness the person or experience in our line of sight.  By cultivating a level of stillness in my own heart through my daily dates with God, there is room to take in the cherishing. I did not realize years ago when I began these dates out of desperation and pain that it would open up an understanding of the fundamental gift of life.  A life that I was no longer interested in just getting through but one with so much to cherish.  I consider myself very lucky to have experienced the things I have experienced and lived to tell about it.  Yes, even the incest survival and the obesity survival.  It is not always easy to stand tall and slough off the remaining vestiges of the impact of those experiences, but I believe the profound level at which I am able to cherish life is in direct correlation to the level of which I experienced the pain of life.  I do not think it is the only way to come to a place of cherishing life, but it the avenue I was given.  The more I take the simple principles and practices I learned on my daily dates of pausing, breathing, and connecting to my heart does it continue to change the view of my eyes to one of cherishing.