dailydatewithgod

We all have inclinations to certain things.  Some of are drawn to a particular profession, a preferred living area, or certain types of people.  The elements which appeal to us, draw us in, attract us, and tell us something about how we are designed.  Yet there is a competing notion telling us we need to fit in. It gets confusing when we try to compare what is appealing to us versus someone else.  Then you add social media in the mix and the comparison train is going faster than a speeding bullet.  We get lost in trying to justify our attractions or make them like others. To discern what is truly appealing to us requires us to pause and check in with our hearts.  We get to ask questions, explore, and find out what might be behind what we are attracted to.  Our hearts are in touch with our desires but we tend to quickly jump into judgment in our minds so we can explain to those outside of us why we find certain things appealing.  Maybe there is no reason other than we are designed to find them appealing.  Who’s to say that what you or I find appealing is better or worse than what others find appealing? What we are attracted to will draw us out to be the expression of love we are meant to be.  If we were all supposed to line up like ducks wearing the same outfits we would have been part of the von Trapp family singers.  The greatest gift we can give to each other and to the world is to follow what is appealing to us and use it to create the expression of light and life we are designed to be.

One of the things we do not realize is how many requirements we place on ourselves and those around us.  Life itself is believed to go according to plan.  Any time we find ourselves stating a “should” we know we are in the realm of requirements.  We are telling ourselves and others that as long as the people and the situation are going as expected, I am okay. We are asking ourselves and others to be a certain way in order to procure our sense of well-being.  We have timing requirements, behavior requirements, and visual requirements. We are uncomfortable with the unknown and the unexpected because our mind interprets it as possible danger.  To avoid danger, we place the requirement expectations and fall for the illusion that we are okay.  However, we set ourselves up for trouble because rarely do people or circumstances meet all our requirements.  At the very least we end up disappointed in ourselves, others, or situations.  At the very worst, we have based our peace and serenity on something or someone who cannot meet that need.  My daily dates with God are the only thing I have found to keep from falling for the very worst of what comes of requirements.  In our time together and consequently throughout the day, I get reacclimated to the truth. The truth that nothing outside of my own heart provides the consistency and the core grounding which guides my peace and serenity.  Any time I forget, all I have to do is pause, draw my attention to my heart, and take a deep breath.  Letting go of requirements is a process and I mess it up all the time.  The more time I spend reconnecting with my heart, the easier it becomes to not fall for the “shoulds” I am ridiculously requiring of myself or others.

We look for and depend upon what we perceive as unchanging.  We as humans like the permanence idea.  Yet we know the only permanence is the presence of change.  It is the great dance of life to vacillate between our expectations of reality and reality as it exists in truth.  God invites us into our hearts to experience a solidity that allows us to dance with the impermanence of life. We like to struggle in the dance, much to our own dismay or thinking we don’t we really like to struggle.  Our minds are a camping ground for the discussion, the managing of multiple ideas and experiences, the facts and figures,and the justifications and excuses for why things are not as they should be.  With all that mulling around in our mind it gets clouded and loud.  Pausing and breathing into our hearts allows us to send some of the energy of presence in the moment and quiet the mind.  God provides the solidity of the never-changing characteristics of our hearts and the permanence of the dance from our heart to our head and back again.  It is the mystery and the moment reigniting our spirit and encouraging us to keep dancing through the impermanence of life.  It is the stillness and power of love in our hearts giving us the courage to take one more step and stay in the dance just for today.

Time has some illusory qualities.  Three minutes can seem like no time at all when we are rushing from one thing to another and seem like everything when we are three minutes late for an important appointment.  As a kid, we thought for use summer was so far away.  As adults we are amazed to be at the end of another year that just seemed to fly by. Time seems to depend on the context.  We like to think of it in a mechanical fashion as in an hour is always an hour.  If you are sitting in traffic or spending time with a loved one that same hour either does not move fast enough or is not enough time.  You break it down to 60 minutes or 3600 seconds for either experience so it is clear that the actual time has not changed.  We take for granted that time moves us on.  Whether we like it or not whatever the experience of time we are having, it will pass.  In our hearts exists a timelessness.  When we are engaged from our hearts time is described as standing still.  It is as though the restrictions of the mind disappears.  Some describe it as being in the flow of life.  Letting go for a minute or two of the fixation on the number of seconds or minutes allows us to drop into our hearts perspective of right here, right now.  The big deal about being in the present is the magical quality it seems to possess for overriding reality.  One is able to make the hour stretch out because we step out of our mind keeping track of the seconds and savor every breath that happens as it happens.

The funny thing about all the buzzes and the noises around us all the time is they know how to prompt us into action.  The devices and noises of the world are calling us to pay attention.  It takes focus and concentration to choose to answer what is calling our hearts.  God speaks into our hearts with a whisper.  God’s calling is more gentle than our phones or alarm clocks.  The calling comes from within our own hearts. Our life force lives in our hearts.  Many years I felt like I was constantly calling on God and receiving no answer.  I kept looking for God to show up in big grand ways. Where were the miracles?  Where was the joy?  What happened to all those powerful healing actions that Jesus’ performed?  How come those were not answers I got when I called on God?  For me, it was not until I quieted down and listened for God calling me that a shift occurred.  I had to let go of my ideas and expectations of God calling.  Continually I find that when I feel disconnected from God it is because I stopped listening for the calling coming from my heart.  When I pause, take a deep breath, and draw attention to my heart I able to get centered again.  When I am centered I can let the outside callings drop away.  When it is quieter I can hear the calling of God in my heart.  Then and only then I am open to experiencing it as it is and not as I expect it to be.

Practice makes perfect. At least that is the tag line a number of us heard growing up.  I have come to believe that practice makes permanent or practice makes progress.  If in God’s eyes we are already perfect what would be the point of practice?  Practicing is about discovering what is in God’s eyes for ourselves. Practicing becomes our living adventure in love.  We are growing and changing all the time.  Our hearts are calling us to be the bearers of love for ourselves and the world.  We do not know when we walk into a situation what is the best way to be the love we are until we are present in the moment. But we can all practice love wherever we are. Our hearts long to be practicing their nature in all situations.  Sometimes we have a grasp on that but we cannot rely on what we already know.  Practicing is the compassionate opportunity to be as we are meant to be and not worry about messing it up.  The world does not need perfection.  It needs realness.  Practicing makes room for reality.  God is in reality.  I do not know how to love the parts of myself I do not like.  I do not know how to love the person who professes to believe the opposite of what I do. I do not know how to love and forgive the person who has hurt me. Being honest about it gives me the chance to step into practicing surrender and openness. II do not need to know how. I only have to be willing.  Willing to surrender my lack of power to God and ask God to show me what practicing love looks like in this situation with this person or circumstance.  I am practicing what it means to be love in a way that is unfamiliar to me when I take the action.  It is simple but not easy. The act of practicing allows my heart to grow, expand.  I grow by learning about the breadth, depth, and power of love.

It is easy to get side-tracked when there are so many things clamoring for our attention.  Where we decide to place our focus determines our reality.  When we do not make a decision we lose sight of what is important to us.  Sometimes we go on automatic pilot and before we realize it what we are valuing is not what we intended.  It is what our default mode intended.  Life asks us to show up.  Show up and choose what we are valuing.  Choose the measure we want to share of ourselves in our being with the world.  Choose what value we bring to life.  Choose what we want to get out of it.  I used to think I was at the mercy of everything from my sexual abuse experiences to the weight on my body.  None of that is true.  When I reconnect with my heart I find the truth of who I am.  When I choose to reconnect, I get to discover my value.  Valuing my experiences from the past is a choice.  I did try to ignore them and throw them away.  That did not work to well.  The only freedom I have found is in valuing the experiences.  Not because I like to be in pain but because it is not something I can change. What I can change by valuing it is what happens now?  What I do with what happened shapes the experience of the present and the future.  My choice to value the bad stuff as much as the good stuff is my choice. The world may not understand it.  People will have their opinions about it, but I care about what my God thinks and what my heart sees and knows.  I have had the experience of being rescued from things.  Incest was not one of them, so I choose to believe there is a greater opportunity here.  My heart whispers that maybe just maybe by valuing the frightening and maddening experience of being an incest survivor I can create a present and future reality that I would not be able to otherwise.  I have transformed a lot in body and mind and there is more to go.  I figure that is why I am still breathing.  I will know I am done when I am dead.  On the days that are really really hard and I want to jump out of my skin and be anywhere but the present moment because I feel like I am in a time warp from the past, I stop and breathe.  I turn my attention to my heart and ask what it is valuing in this moment and I listen.  I listen until I find my center.  It may take a while.  There are tears, moments of rage, and friends I trust along the way.  When I am ready to hear it, my heart will open up and show me my value.

It seems like anything that begins with “ex” falls into a category of outside of ourselves.  We put it in front of anything that we are creating distance from and it tends to taint whatever that thing is.  Instead of “EX” we experience it like “X“. Do not go there, danger, danger!  What if the ex could be less about staying away from and more about choosing what to keep close? When we remind ourselves that we have the power to choose what stays close to us versus hoping something we swore off will not come near us again, we are no longer victims.  Knowing the exceptions in your life can free you from the judgment you have on yourself and others to be the one for everyone.  Do we feel bad that we are not closer to our exes?  How does it work if there is no change in the kind of relationship one has with his or her exes whether they are people, ideas, or experiences?  When I take an exception to something I am choosing to leave it out.  When I make an exception for something I am setting aside my thinking or experience to consider a different side.  I do not make exceptions to protect myself.  I make exceptions to create clarity in my life.  Our minds will do jumping jacks to justify why we should keep it close because it is familiar and the mind loves familiar.  Our hearts have the courage to go through the separation so we can find out more of who we are without that thing, experience or person.  Exception does not always mean exclusion and even when it does, it is not because we are x-ing it out of our existence.  If nothing else, going forward I will want to know more about every word that begins with ex and pay close attention to the words I am using to tell the story of my life.

It seems as though things come together in the end.  The longer I live my life the more I am in acceptance of the timing of things.  Of course, letting go of my perfectionist tendencies also helps.  My approach may not be so Zen when it comes to dating and relationships or old wounds that seem to need more cycles to work through, but nobody can do everything the same.  Besides, I figure if I do not trust in God’s appointed time on those things, I am really left out in the cold.  There are too many occurrences where the person who I needed to speak to just showed up, the book carrying the insights I was lacking came across my path, or the experience to generate the feelings I did not know how to connect with happens.  The appointed person, book, or experience present themselves in a way that I could not have orchestrated if I tried.  It is in the humbling appointed moments and times, I am reminded that God has my back.  Someone somewhere with greater wisdom than me is insuring the greatest good for all involved.  It makes me wonder how often I am the appointed one in someone else’s life. I am tickled at the idea that God might be using me as an instrument of happenstance in someone’s life and I have no idea. If we pause and breathe sometimes we can sense it in the moment, but it requires a certain playful approach to life.  It is not about being or feeling controlled.  It is about falling into the mystery of life and how it works out.  Acknowledging the appointed experiences in our lives whether we are the givers or the receivers reminds me to slow down and enjoy the ride.

The well-known Christmas Carol originating in England, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” sings over and over about tidings of comfort and joy.  It is not too often that you hear people talk about bringing comfort to something.  Joy, happiness, peace are more commonly used ideas.  How many of us wake up and think about what comfort will come our way today?  We may not think it but we often approach life from the standpoint of what is most comfortable.  As human beings we have little bandwidth for the uncomfortable. Some of the synonyms for comfort are ease, convenience, pleasure, luxury, well-being, all things the world tells us to strive for.  But what does comfort in our hearts mean?  It is delight, encouragement, soothing, cheer, and even relief.  We tend to think of comfort in physical terms.  The moment I hear the word I think of a warm blanket and a hot cup of tea.  What would it mean to give and receive comfort from our hearts?  How might God be demonstrating comfort as we walk through the holiday season and all its craziness?  Statistically speaking more people are anxious about the holidays than excited.  That does not sound comforting.  Somehow I don’t think purchasing more luxurious or convenient items will aid in the reduction of anxiety, at least not in a lasting way.  What would it look like to bring comfort into an anxious world?  How might we use the energy of our hearts which God readily supplies with comfort and bring tidings of comfort and joy to a fellow human being or to ourselves?