dailydatewithgod

Do you ever notice that our goal seems to be relief?  When we are in pain we search for a pain reliever.  When we are worried about a friend, family, member or coworker we feel relieved when we connect with them and find out how they are doing.  When we finish the task we feel a sense of relief that it is no longer hanging over us or on the to do list.  Relief as wonderful as it is has a temporary nature.  Especially given that once we experience it, it does not stay.  There is always something else from which we need relief.  I suppose like the commercial says, we want relief because we haven’t got time for the pain.  Pain whether emotional, intellectual, spiritual, or physical is no fun.  I get it, when I am experiencing pain I want relief too.  But maybe the relief is not meant to remove the pain entirely, but give us enough space to take a look at what it is trying to tell us.  Over the years in my relationship with God I have come to think of relief as God’s nudge of energy to keep us going just a bit further.  Relief doesn’t come to us so we can move on or keep doing what we are doing, it comes so we can pause and have some breathing room to listen to the message of the pain.  Pain can be a loud, clamoring voice and when it is screaming at me I cannot make heads or tails of it.  When I experience some relief, usually temporary, it gives me the space to take a look.  What was the message of the pain?  God, how do you see the pain?  Just like we learn from our shadows and our darkness, we can open ourselves up in the moments of relief to take a closer look at the pain from which we have just been relieved.  Sometimes the answer is just that we are having a very human experience.  Sometimes it is an indication of something more to see.  We can appreciate the relief and utilize it to awaken our sights to messages from pain we would otherwise just glide past.

The hardest time to be a witness to the light and the most needed time to be a witness to the light is when we are in darkness.  It is what we need the most, yet have not the slightest clue how to connect with.  For most of my 20s, until I got into recovery, I suffered from clinical depression.  It was something that ran in my father’s side of the family.  Besides the sense of hopelessness, there was this feeling of constantly being under a cloud of darkness. It was not a feeling of being sad all the time, it was a sense of feeling nothing.  I could see light all around me and I clung to it where I could in any way that I could, but it would not stay.  Each day I found myself back under the cloud.  Looking back on it now, I can see there was a lot in my life that I had not yet faced.  I trust that it was not yet time. By facing the darkness which overwhelmed my mind would prepare me to trust I would be able to face the darkness in my own heart. I remember very distinctly that when I started taking medication, I would get these waves of remembrance of a time when I didn’t feel that way.  It was amazing.  It had sunk in so deep I had forgotten there was a time when it wasn’t so hard to stay in the light.  The medication for me poked holes in the darkness.  The doctor called it a chemical imbalance, but all I knew was that whatever it was doing it was restoring me to some kind of baseline from which I could operate like a normal human being.  It wasn’t such a struggle to take a shower anymore and I didn’t have to exhaust myself being so overly happy.  It was a relief to sense that somehow the light found its way back to me.  I believe in our hearts where God dwells is this very light that is always there and as bright as ever.  Sometimes our minds disconnect from it and forget how to make their way back.  It is like it left breadcrumbs but someone got on the path and ate them.  When God finds a way to help us reconnect with the light within us, we can move and breathe and be in the way we were meant.  My life did not go perfectly after I started taking medication.  I have learned there are very few straight paths in life.  I believe it was a part that eventually would get me into a recovery room where I felt safe enough to begin to open the wounds in my heart that existed side by side with the light (the one’s that hurt the most) but could not see.  We all have experiences of darkness in our lives whether it is a medical condition, an idea, a person, or an experience where we forget how to reconnect with the light we are in most need of and long for.  God wants to help us return to the truth of who we are which is light and love even if the path to do so may not be the one we were expecting.

It is kind of humorous that God operates on such a subtle level.  I sometimes think of God posses this stealth power of being.  Perhaps because the energy of love is so overwhelming it must be transmitted to us in small doses, lest we be overwhelmed.  As my daily dates with God became a regular thing I noticed a shift in how I perceived life.  I began to be on the lookout for signs of God’s presence throughout the day.  I bothered to get quiet and listen for the still small voice that was nudging me in one direction or the other. I also began to notice the subtle communication that seemed to be coming from my body.  A sense to move forward or not, a literal pause before speaking, or a feeling in my gut. As an incest survivor I decided early on that my body had betrayed me.  It was the only way to make logical sense of the sensations I was feeling in them before I had the language and the context to understand what they were.  No one was able to explain to me or even notice I was experiencing anything.  So I did the only thing a child does which is just make it all bad. So as I grew in my daily relationship with God and began to notice these inklings my body was having.  They had been there all along but since my inklings did not match what was happening to me as a kid over and over I concluded they were wrong and bad.  I was basing it on all past experience.  Gratefully, because God is patient with me and surrounded me with people to whom I could begin to share and process the past experiences, I am able to slowly pay attention to the inklings without being alarmed all the time.  In that process, which is a daily one, I begin to know who I am and unveil some wounded parts that are in need of love.  If I were to continue to exclude those inklings I would be missing out on part of the wholeness of the human experience God has in store for me.  We all have experiences which taint our perspective on some of our life experience.  We carry some wounds often in our bodies and those may be the very areas where these inklings towards knowing ourselves and the very essence of love may be hiding.  God presents them to us in inklings so we can slowly step into an adult knowing of the whole of ourselves and know love more fully.

The fun about a mystery story is when we solve it, right?  If that were really the case then we would jump to the end of the book or the movie of every mystery story.  There is an aliveness we experience when we are discovering each of the pieces that unveil what is going on.  The same thing occurs in our spiritual lives.  We think we want the answer to who or what God truly is and why we are here.  Most people go their whole lives in search of this answer.  It is in the discovering little by little God and themselves in the process that we create a life.  It goes completely contrary to the status quo which says we are a sum of our results. This very individual endeavor is what brings us face to face with who we are being in the world.  God invites us to discover who we are as measured by our hearts as fully as we easily embrace who we are in our minds. It takes a little more concentrated effort and step back from all the clamoring.  Yet it is this very patient and persistent effort in the pursuit of discovery of the nature of love’s existence that is fueling our hearts.  It is why over and over again we see people do crazy things in the pursuit of love.  It is a call to awaken the power of discovery in ourselves and inspire others to do the same.  It is what keeps the energy of love alive and awake in the world.

The essence of a spiritual life grows in our willingness to be guided by something other than our own minds.  It is opening our perception to include that which cannot foresee or understand.  It is a staunch contradiction to the rational world that demands an explanation for everything.  God cannot always be explained through human logic.  Yet there are times we get the sense we are being guided in a direction for which there is no map, no bread crumbs left by another person, or it is a seemingly completely different direction than most people go.  God’s guidance is always the space of greatest growth in love.  Perhaps the reason we cannot see the direction of the guidance as the most logical is because it is pulling us from our hearts.  The resistance we experience is not to the guidance itself but the resistance within ourselves because of the lack of connection between our minds and our hearts.  Often the guidance is to bridge the gap within ourselves so we can move more powerfully into the action of love in our lives that is called for in the moment.  The interesting thing I have found when following what I sense is guidance from God or Spirit, or whatever you call it, is my initial resistance to it.  I find myself demanding an explanation of how it is possible to get where I need to go through that route.  I cannot see it and therefore determine it to not be possible.  I imagine God laughs with loving delight at my naiveté sometimes and reminds me gently that just because I do not believe in my mind that it is possible, does not mean my heart does not see the possibility.  Following the guidance of God requires courage and faith.  Courage comes from the heart and faith is lived in action.

There is a lot of language in the world especially in the self-improvement world about making our mark.  The encouragement is to show up to life in a big way and make a difference.  There are definitely some big things happening in the world and big ways we can impact each other, but I think God calls us to smallness of action.  God is calling on us to find the smallest ways to love, to be present, and to give.  Doing it consistently is what creates a big wave of change.  Mother Teresa said , “I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.” We take the small movements of love for granted but when the chips are down they are the ones in the forefront of our mind.  I cannot tell you how easily my heart is lifted on a troubled day when someone looks at me and smiles.  Or the impact of a phone call to someone we know just to say hello and we are thinking about them.  Looking at our day at the opportunities to be loving with smallness makes it more doable.  I may not feel particularly kind or loving in a given moment towards someone I don’t know but I can certainly extend my hand to say hello.  I may not know how to be there for a friend who is having a difficult time but I can muster of the small amount of energy needed to say, “I am here if you need anything.”  We never truly now how the smallness of love can make a big impact so why not start with the small. How much more powerful can we get than to look for the smallest of ways to be present and give love?  It is much less overbearing than thinking of how we can make a big impact on the lives of those around us.  We may be thinking a long while and miss out on the small opportunities to take action.

As we walk the path of spirituality through whatever means we use we come across elements of our lives that no longer serve the purpose and direction we are walking. When we invite God into our lives fully we recognize areas that no longer need to be there.  We can serve ourselves by excluding them from our realm of possibilities.  We recognize them for the purpose they served in our development at the time and thank them for their service.  We ask God for the courage to not fall into thinking they are still options and ways of coping with life.  When we make the choice to exclude certain things, we open the doors to include more of love’s ways of being.  When I choose to exclude fear as an option to act from I open the space for courage.  It does not mean it is bad for me to fear or that I cannot listen to its lesson, but excluding it is an option for action means I can see other options.  Options like not doing it on my own, asking God for courage, a willingness to try to make mistakes.  If I included fear as an option from which to act, I would be in familiar territory that has served me well in the past, but I would not grow from it.

We have this slant on life that it is all about happiness.  It seems to be a phenomenon in this country.  There is nothing wrong with it. After all, who wants all their energy focused on unhappiness?  Certainly not me.  The thing that is disconcerting is that we tend to throw away or want to quickly get rid of anything that is not positive.  As if it does not also have some value. If life is about learning and growing in love then noticing the things that are barriers to the growth of love will show up for us.  It can be perceived to be the easy route to push them aside or bury them but they never really go away. So what we end up is a surface layer that everything is great on top of all that which we have ignored.  How strong is that kind of building.  And this is the building in our hearts.  As hard as it may seem paying attention to the unhappy moments of life are often the road to the happiness we are seeking.  God is ready to support us in traveling this path, we are not alone.  God can do this because God does not view barriers to love as a problem but rather an invitation to love deeper.  Our experiences of unhappiness are happiness in disguise if we face them with love.

In a world of cause and effect we can view ourselves as being tossed about by life. We feel as though we are being pulled in many different directions.  We are impacted by the people and experiences with which we interact.  This makes sense we are not islands, we do not operate completely independent of one another.  The distinction that God wants us to make comes in choosing what influences us.  We can be affected and impacted by many things, but we get to choose which influences our being.  What is happening does not need to take away the influence of God or our understanding of ourselves.  We can choose to continue to the let God’s influence and the power of love in our hearts be our guiding force.  We can acknowledge the effect or the impact but not take action based on it.  God wants us to know life is about who we are being not what we are doing.  God always sees us as the love we are and cheers us on as we choose to be influenced by it instead of the whims of the world.  It takes courage to allow the influence of God to remain in the forefront of our  minds and hearts.

I have never been very good with plants.  I even described myself as having a black thumb.  I think it has more to do with not having any particular interest in gardening.  I am very grateful for those who do.  Given that so much of what I eat is plant-based, I would really be out of luck if they did not exist.  I have always admired the way people who garden talk about the process.  They speak of tending a garden like taking special care of the earth and what it provides.  The time and the effort put into making sure the earth has what it needs to bring forth new life that can be shared is marvelous.  I suppose it is much like tending a relationship. Energy, time, concentration, and knowing how the plant responds to sun and water. Making sure to not give it too much or not enough and stunt it growth.  I wonder if God sees herself as tending to us?  It certainly feels that way in the quiet moments of the day.  He checks in on us often, makes water and sun available, and provides nourishing ground from which to grow and become the best version of ourselves so we can be shared with others.  On my daily dates with God I feel as though she has taught me the power of tending to myself to make sure I am able to grow all in an effort to be life which can be shared.  Tending is not always what I want to do and it may not be my first thought.  I often need God’s help to determine if the kind of tending I am thinking of will help me grow or stay stuck in the ground.  It comes much quieter than the rest of the world.  Tending for me include making time to stop and listen for the still small voice that says, “Grow, grow, grow in love”.