dailydatewithgod

We carry around this funny notion that we can keep God out of certain part of our lives.  I certainly did.  It was not until I realized that God wanted to be a part of every part of my life that I began to see it differently.  I also noticed over time as we grew closer on our dates that the areas of my life that I did not include God in were the same areas where I continued to struggle.  Once I connected to the idea that if I invited God in I could allow peace, understanding, and freedom to  accompany my experience.  Slowly I began to recognize that wherever I go, God goes with me.  Yet God will not intrude on my experience.  It is up to me to turn to Him and invite him into the experience. I even noticed that when I wrote letters to God I at the end almost in a response from God I would write, “I AM, I AM WITH YOU, and I AM WITHIN YOU”  God is with us wherever we go because God is within us.  We were created by her so wherever we go, God is there.   It started by first recognizing that wherever I found myself, God would be there too.  The power of the realization came when I decided I wanted God to be wherever I AM .

I have always had a curious mind. As a kid even if I didn’t ask my questions out loud, there was no shortage of them in my head.  What I didn’t understand for a long time is that while contemplation is very helpful it has its limits.  Thinking about something and doing something pale in comparison.  Thinking about it generates more thoughts and feelings. Those are important but often the answers I am seeking can only come from attempting an action and getting reactions.  I feared attempting certain things because I thought I needed to know how it was going to turn out.  My framework around failure or disappointment was such that if it happened it defined me.  A messed up attempt that someone else might learn something from would instead tell you who I was.  The messages I heard in my mind were that I am a failure and  I am a disappointment,.  I marveled at people who lived by the motto that it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.  My goal, thought not consciously, was to not need anything for which I would need to be forgiven.  It is a very restrictive way to live.  Once in a while I would step out of that but at my core I was striving for a sense of safety which seemed to be lacking.  One could say that my life up until I got into recovery was about surrounding myself with facades of safety one of which was to not fail and to not disappoint. In recovery I learned I cannot think my way into right action, but I can act my way into right thinking. As I began to build an authentic relationship with God on our daily dates I saw that God’s love and acceptance of me did not waver no matter how many failures or disappointments occurred.  God sees life through the lens of learning.  My perception is that God is excited when we are attempting.  When I am attempting, I am opening the door to learning.  It is not about the result, it is about attempting to get some result so I have something from which to learn.

So much of our experience in the world is centered around the immediate.  We are rewarded for being the first to respond and to know the answer.  I love having resolution as quickly as possible as much as anyone.  It is hard to be in the space of not knowing or contemplating.  There is a certain sense of failure often perceived with hesitation.  If you do not know the answer right away, it may be that you not wanting to say or share with another.  If you hesitate it’s because you are not ready.  Both of those might be true, but why is hesitation seen in a bad light?  It is only when we compare it to the opposite of immediate and certainty that hesitation is less than desirable   Both have a place in our experience.  When we find ourselves hesitating we can use it as an invitation to explore.  Hesitation can be less about not knowing and more about knowing you need more time to consider the idea or the feeling.  Sometimes we need the hesitation experience to sparse out which is genuine time and which is stalling.  We want to have clarity around our motives and it may require getting quiet first.  I can hesitate out of fear, as we all can.  Instead of making ourselves wrong for hesitating out of fear, we can choose to see it as God’s gift of exploration.  Maybe God wants us to be able to see our fear and bring it to him.  She knows that fear will not live long in the truth of who we are based on our design. It takes time to know what resonates most truly with our inner hearts.  It can require pause and quiet and all the things for which the world says there is no time.  If God created time then I am thinking that God perceives plenty of time for anything and everything that we allow to be reconciled to our hearts.  From there our decisions will generate more opportunities for love and peace in ourselves and in the world.  It is easy to fall prey to what we perceive as other’s necessity for immediate answers.  It take courage to hesitate and allow ourselves to rely on God to bring us to a space of true peace and love not just the momentary gratification we get from a quick response.

It is amazing what we can accomplish when we start with the smallest steps.  Children do not grow overnight.  There is a step by step process in our bodies that knows exactly what comes first and then it continues from there.  The same happens when we build buildings.  We start with a design, lay the foundation, put up the beams to provide the wall structure, and so on.  We cannot put up the beams without the foundation.  Not if we expect it to last.  Relationships are no different.  One does not go from being an acquaintance to being a best friend in one moment.  It starts with recognition and conversation which increases in-depth over time.  We are often in such a rush to move from beginning to end that we do not allow time for the process of growing, building, or cultivating relationship.  Within the allowance of the process is where the strength of connection are created.  I am fortunate to have a few girlfriends whom I have known for over 30 years.  They are the most precious women to me. Our friendship started in middle school, a typically wacky time when your friends can make or break your reality.  When I reflect on the formation of my relationship with each of those women, it is not the big moments we shared standing out in my mind.   It is the small goofy circumstances and interactions that remind me of how precious those relationships are. It is the times when we allowed each other to be a messes and took turns being the one to help pick up the pieces.   There was no way to know on any given day that it would create the experience that would end up meaning so much.  They are the moments when God was so present in the love and connection we shared because we allowed each other and the circumstances to just be. It is what I found myself thinking back years later when I attended their weddings or got the call to celebrate a new job.  It is what we rehash when we get together once a year for our reunion.  The allowance of  building our connection over time is the glue that keeps us desiring to continue to connect despite the obstacles.  God allows us the freedom to be exactly who we are when we and what we are.  God trusts in the process of a relationship that can grow over time if we allow room to just be.  It is what gets cultivated on our daily dates and what I look forward to most when I wake up.

It is clear to me that God’s understanding of love is different from mine.  God has this all-embracing acceptance of what is. God has the vision of our innocence and wholeness readily in her mind at all times.  God’s ideas and expressions of love are not hindered by human limitation and experiences. My daily dates with God have shown me that the same capacity dwells within our own hearts. Why would it not?  We were created by the very being that operates from this space of this understanding love. We were designed to be the messengers of love. He is constantly guiding us back to our hearts.  She is calling us home to the reality of who we are.  It begins by trusting God’s vision is possible.  In recovery I learned the concept of God as a power greater than myself.  No matter how much energy and intention I put into loving I still seem to pale in comparison to what God is capable of.  This alone defines God as something greater than me. I do not always see the wholeness and innocence of myself and others.  I am often limited in loving based on my limitations and experiences.  When I take the time to be present on our dates each day I have the opportunity to connect in my heart space to God’s capacity for love. I can trust it to be there because I have experienced it moving in and through me.  It happens most often when I get out-of-the-way.  It is as though admitting that I alone  cannot summon what is needed to bring love to the situation makes room for it.  In my admission I reach for the hand of God and trust it will guide me to my heart.  It may not present itself in the fashion or form I am expecting because that would limit it to my imagination.  Trusting little by little that no matter what I feel, it is there is what defines faith.

One of the ways I feel God communicates is through music.  We all know the feeling of being touched in our hearts by music.  There is something about how the rhythms and beats vibrate through our ears into the rest of our body.  As a dancer I am cognizant of the times I feel compelled to move because of a piece of music.  When musicians create they become the channels through which God can shine. The fact that our cells operate through vibrations speaks to the profound connection we feel with sound in general and specifically music. Yet like any modality it can be used for good or harm. Since we have a vast array of musical options, it begs the question of whether some is good and some is harmful.  The music industry has certainly faced this question over the years as different musical trends and styles have reached popularity. One could pose the same question when it comes to any part of creation or God, the Great Creator.  If God is alive in the creation process, and God is love, how can something that has been created draw us away from love?  It is a fundamental question of existence: Is God truly all-encompassing or is there God and then the opposite of God?  With an all-encompassing God there is room to be flawed.  There is room to grow into love.  It allows for the possibility of change.  God is not all-encompassing because God is the opposite of love or could even express the opposite of love but because God leaves no stone unturned in providing an opportunity for anything to be used as a portal back to love.  When we are all-encompassing of all of ourselves, we keep from wasting time trying to excise the less than desirable parts of ourselves and others from the picture.  God models an encompassing way of being because God always makes room for all of his children, no matter how far they have strayed.  She wants us to know that if we use what has been created to return to the truth of who we are, then there is room for all of it.  The fact of creation does not make something good or bad, it is in whether we use it to return to ourselves and God.

I was at a workshop once where we were asked to describe the volunteer on the stage based only on what we could see.  There was another group on the opposite side of the stage who were asked to do the same without the volunteer turning around.  Of course each side had different descriptions because they were viewing the person from different angles.  Even with the two angles we could not describe anything more than physical features of the person which is only one angle of how she might be described.  The point was to get us to realize that if we can only see someone or something from one angle we are missing the full picture.  We need other people to share with us the angle from which they are seeing things to get the full picture.  Essentially the two groups could not agree on the description because they were seeing two different people according to the angle of view. It is less about agreement and more about acknowledging that we are missing some perspectives because of the limited angles.  God encourages us to open up and see things from different angles.  This includes ideas, people, and even ourselves.  The full beauty of an experience or individual cannot be had from one angle. How many of us when we are asked to describe someone we are seeing walk all around them, lay on the floor and look up at them or get above them and look down?  If we only describe them from one angle it is not a full picture. And if we wanted to describe someone emotionally, mentally, tonally or otherwise we would need the angles of their heart, mind, and voice.  It takes courage to admit we often limit ourselves to the angle most readily available to us and fill in the blanks.  Once we admit it we can ask God to show us other angles of the person which may involve engaging with the person and with others to learn of the angles through which they describe the person.

There are all kinds of situations in our lives that wake us up to see with clear eyes the reality of our lives. They are usually the experiences provoking us to pay attention.  We can sometimes dismiss them and push them aside.  We can ignore them and hope they will go away.  Our lives are designed to be lived in full presence.  Our spirit comes alive and moves through us when we are awakened by the provoking of life.  We can look at it as a burden or a failure but then we lose the opportunity the provoking provides.  It is not about the content, it is the process. Whether it is an experience or person who is provoking us is not important.  What is important is the message of our soul that is calling for an awakening to live more fully through the provoking.  I know I pay attention more acutely when I am provoked by pain.  It is harder to push aside but in the end it is not about the pain itself, it is about facing what created the pain and walking away from it with my sovereignty intact.  What is provoking us may feel like it will break us, but ultimately it works towards God’s plan of returning us to an awareness of our wholeness.

We live essentially from one breath to the next but we perceive our lives in much larger chunks of time.  I suppose that is why time is relative.  They are days that seem to go on forever and ones that fly by.   If we open ourselves to focusing on each instance occurring in a period of time, we find ourselves living realities than we could have imagined.  Do you ever wonder why it is we breathe so often?  Why does our body move us to take a breath multiple times a minute?  Why does our heart beat so often each 60 seconds? Do we notice these instances of time like seconds or hours ticking by or do we measure them in something other than numbers?  God invites us to pay attention to the wisdom of our heart which changes it numbers of beats depending on what is happening.  What are the instances that speed up our heart and calm it down?  How are the instances of our heart calling us to measure our lives?  We do this intuitively even if we do not realize it.  When we reflect back on a time spent with those we love and care about, we do not measure the hours.  We think about the instances of connection when we laughed, shared a meal, embraced, or listened to one another because they are the language of our heart.  Those instances will long outlast the time in numbers it took for them to occur   When those who are dying look back at their lives, do they remember how many days they spent on vacation or the places and people with whom they spent the days? The instances of new experiences, time to breathe, and being with those we are close to us is how our hearts remember the time.

When we decide to be in the here and now we welcome what life presents to us.  We are ready and available although not always desiring to face what is there.  The beauty of being willing to be with what is presented is the opportunity to be with God.  The only place where God’s time and our time intersects is now.  Most meditation and spiritual practices are designed around helping us get to the now and the fortitude to stay with it.  Our minds want to wander into the past or go to the future.  It is easy to get yanked out of the present moment because it is constantly fluctuating.  In those fluctuations the mind starts to chatter and think.  When we are thinking we are no longer present with what is.  Being with what is presented means having the courage and the desire to be with our calling to receive love or bring love.  It may not look like love and we get stuck in the package, but all we are presented with is a call to be the love or receive the love.  We know it in our hearts and souls.  It is what makes the light within us shine brightly and connect with others.  The more practice we have in seeing what is presented as an opportunity to receive love or give love, the more we have the courage to stay with the present moment.