dailydatewithgod

I used to think that life was about making it to the end with the least amount of bumps or bruises.  It was part of the black and white thinking that thrives as a child and in the holds of addiction.  Everything is all or nothing.  What I now see and know in my heart from my daily dates with God is that it is more the other way around.  It is the bruises and the bumps it gives us a chance to discover our character.  It is not about the experience of them but what they invite us to learn about ourselves. Recently, my neighbor has been teaching his son how to ride his bike without the training wheels.  I remember when my dad taught me and my first solo ride on the street I banged right into the rear side of a parked car. It left a nice bruise on my hip but I got more of a sense of how to keep my balance.  Maybe in some alternate universe I would have known how to balance perfectly the first time on a two-wheel bike, but that is not the universe I live in.  More importantly the bruise became a sign that I took a risk.  I did something I had never done before and I did not die.  There is always a chance to get bruised, especially where our ego is concerned.  God invites us to see that our hearts come to the rescue when it comes to our ego’s bruising as it does in our physical bruising.  Just like it rushes to the part of our body that is injured to begin repair, our heart is ready to remind us that who we are is much more than our ego.  Our heart thrives on learning more of ourselves by taking the risk in the first place.  Our heart has the self-compassion to comfort us when our bruise is a symbol of being let down or disappointed in ourselves.  Allowing our heart to repair the bruise we are healed.