dailydatewithgod

Knowing what separates us from one another is helpful in distinguishing to whom or what we belong.  It is an essential survival tool for us as humans especially when living in the wild.  Today, however, most people do not live in the wild. We do still need to feel a part of a community.  We are meant for relationship with one another.  I have experienced a great benefit from being with and around people with whom I feel a part of and accepted.  Families operate this way, economic status creates it, and social and cultural groups provide a safe space in which to thrive.  If we know we belong then we are able to grow without having to constantly defend ourselves on our own.  There is a  breathable element present when we know we can express ourselves without being attacked.  The problem which can be created by separating ourselves is in thinking other’s differences makes them better or worse than us.  We can acknowledge the separateness without excluding who or what with whom we interact.  Through the belonging we can make room to include and be open to ideas and experiences different from our own.  We can assess together if they are a threat or simply a difference.  The openness to inclusion allows for growth and expansion.  Determining how close of an inclusion we create is up to us and God.  The same goes for the inclusion of elements of ourselves which we see as potentially threatening.  God is open to including all of who we are as he already has.  She knows there is space in our hearts to include all the quirkiness and darkness we posses. The more inclusion I have with all of who I am from moment to moment, the more at peace I am with myself and others.

My prayer for us is the curiosity to explore what elements of ourselves we keep at a distance and ask God how we can include them and grow to accept and love them today.

Our perspective is what drives our reality.  It is formed from past experiences and senses of the present moment.  When we walk into our day we do so with the perspective we have accumulated thus far.  The power for me in my daily prayer and meditation date with God is an opportunity to shift my perspective so I am may be present to the experiences of my day as they are.  I find the simplicity of asking God to help me see what he sees makes room for the shifting of what I see.  She invites me to look at things from a different angle.  God offers up the view of innocence for all I may encounter in my day.  He shows me what the situation looks like from the back-end versus the front.  She provides additional insight into what is blocking me from seeing things differently.  The shifting comes when I am open to receiving what God opens my heart to.  The desire to be open to the shifting comes from the practice which I return to willingly because of the lightness of heart I receive.  The added benefit of shifting my perspective regarding situations and others is it also shifts me into being able to see myself as God sees me.

When we set out to travel it is helpful to have directions.  Otherwise we wander aimlessly trying to figure out how to get there.  I remember paper maps I kept in my car when I first moved to Los Angeles.  Then it was print out directions from map quest before I got in the car.  Now it is entering the address in my phone so the GPS can provide directions as I am driving.  God provides direction in our lives.  But God is not always as direct as going from point A to point B. The path of spirituality can sometimes seem like the long and winding road.  They key is to continue to trust and to enjoy the travel time.  When we look to God to provide direction it can sometimes come back to us as incoherent and confusing information.  We do not always have the insight to understand the purpose of the direction.  God’s direction is about our growth in love. Sometimes I just want to get from one place to another and am looking for a more direct route.  My daily prayer and meditation date with God reminds me life is about the journey, not the destination.  When I follow God’s direction I have the opportunity to experience life to its fullest.  Often I find myself in the midst of the experience I was seeking that I thought would come from reaching the destination.  God thought differently.

My prayer for us is the willingness to trust God’s direction for our lives in providing the opportunities for love to grow more fully in our hearts today.

When I think about things I have been given I find myself wondering how well I received them.  Did I handle it differently if it was something I asked for versus someone else choosing to give to me?  Gifts are a funny thing and come in wrapped in all kinds of packages. Some of the best things I have been given came not in a form I would have requested.  When God gives to us it is because of who God is. God does not give out of obligation or responsibility.  The Great Creator simply creates out of love and the gifts we are given are an expression of love. They are the gifts our souls need to create room for more love in th world.  We can facilitate the growth of the gift by receiving the gifts we have been given and using them to best and highest good despite the packaging they come in.  We are given gifts to use them.  The gifts I struggle receiving the most are the ones I judge as not being gifts at all.  Who wants to be given the experience of being an addict?  Since when is the experience of being an incest survivor a gift?  Who wants the experience of being made fun of in school?  We all have our versions of this.  I have learned on my daily dates with God that we have the capacity to accept what we have been given when we look to God as to how to use it.  I know with God’s help my path of addiction led me to the spirituality of the 12 steps which has become the guiding path in life that I never knew I wanted and needed to be the key to freedom.  With God’s help I have learned how to survive a confusing and frightening childhood experience and find space in my heart for greater love and forgiveness than the world believes is possible.  I have learned what real love and acceptance are from the gifts I have been given in the worst packages.  I am grateful for my courage to receive them and the willingness to turn to God to ask how to use them today.

It is easy to identify areas of our lives that are amiss.  We are usually acutely aware of what is wrong with a situation, person, or ourselves.  Our minds have this unique capability to seek out and find trouble.  It is part of the design to keep us alive.  Living is not about avoiding problems, but it is also not about focusing exclusively on them.  We are a balance of good and bad experiences.  We vacillate between feeling a mess and feeling whole.  We walk the line of freedom and slavery to our mind versus our heart. The blood is flowing back and forth between each.  Our breath comes into our head and makes it down to the heart area and then back up again to go out.  There is a communication going on between these elements.  If we stay in the troubles our mind perceives in our heads without bringing them into our hearts for a  different view we will never see anything but troubles.  The dance between our hearts and minds are part of the mystery of life. It calls upon us to not jump at what our head is telling us but let the heart weigh in as well.  When we take a breath we invite the pause and the opportunity to engage our hearts in addressing our troubles. We will know if our hearts are troubled equally by what we perceive in our mind and then know to take them back to our mind to determine the next step.  God does not design us to avoid or escape troubles.  She invites us to evaluate them fully before becoming absorbed or fixated.  He gave us breath allowing us to embody the process of acting in life.

When we stand back and take a look at our lives we get a sense of where our dedication lies.  How we spend our time, what we fill our minds with, and the ways we choose to grow all speak of our dedications.  Some are obvious on the outside, but not all of them.  If you were to evaluate the conversation in my head before I got into recovery you would think I was dedicated to self-annihilation through judgment and insult.  If you looked at how I ate and abused my body you would see the same dedication.  I would not have described it as self-destruction.  I saw it as self-preservation.  I think we are dedicated to what will preserve our survival.  It is part of our design.  It is a blessed part of our design but as incest survivor my instincts went awry. We hold on so tight to the ways we have learned to survive because we are certain it is the only way to go.  It had to get really bad before I was willing to consider another option.  The reality is I was not aware that my dedication to survival was the cause of my pain.  My mind was stuck in a time frame and series of circumstances that no longer existed.  I had learned early on to adapt and just never stopped.  The breakdown of my survival mechanisms of food and body hatred ended up being the best thing for me. This recovery path has been an enlightening and harrowing process that continues to move forward.  God knew within me existed a dedication of my spirit to my wholeness.  The breakdown allowed for some new light to come in and see the innocence within my own heart.  She is dedicated to my survival as a vessel of light and love.  He understood the importance of leading me gently away from my version of survival to a place where I could dedicate myself to the survival of love through me.

I love watching little kids when they are exploring.  By the time they figure out they can grasp things with their hands and get a closer look they are all about reaching for things.  The part that makes the adults watching them nervous is how they may not account for the other parts of their body and the various obstacles which stand between them and their reach.  I remember as a child getting scolded by my great-grandmother who only spoke Italian. I had stood up on the couch next to the bookshelf to reach and get the silver coasters I wanted to play with.  I did so successfully but turned around to the chair bound woman on the other side of the room waving her hands about and speaking louder than normal as she looked at me very sternly.  I, of course, saw no issue but promptly told  my mom who was int the kitchen that I had upset Nana.  We typically think of reaching as going for something outside ourselves. We reach for a goal to attain.  We reach to hold on to something lest it come loose from our grip. We reach out to other people.  We reach our destination.  But what about reaching inside ourselves?  What about tapping into a reserve we often forget is there? The benefit to exploring what we can reach for within is in its availability to us because it comes from within us.  We can reach for others, but they may not be available. We can reach a destination but it may have changed by the time we arrive. We can reach for a goal but it may not matter in the future they way it does now.  When we reach for a feeling or a thought motivating us to keep going in our travels we can continue to walk the path of our live which has many destinations.  When we reach for a feeling of comfort to still our minds we can relax and make it through a moment when a friend is not available.  When we reach for a sense of satisfaction in the moment we are able to stick with the process of moving towards a goal.  Reaching within provides the resources to show up today that are not dependent on what others and circumstances provide.  It is not about being so fiercely independent as to not need others, it is about reaching and engaging the power of who we are by cultivating their use in the balancing nature of interdependence.

The gift of letting go comes when we realize it creates a space for love to enter in.  When we are opening ourselves up to the possibility of love by letting go of our limited definition of love the world explodes with joy.  It is not easy to be willing to be open because during the space of opening ourselves we feel vulnerable and unsure. It is the in between space of just having let go and waiting for a new experience.  God does not disappoint   God knows the tenderness of our opening space and honors it.  He comes to us with gentleness and a joy that surpasses our understanding. She knows the possibility for fear to creep in during and opening of our hearts but encourages us to remember who God is and not fall for it.  Opening ourselves up to love as God would have us experience love allows us to get in touch with the truth of who we are and live from it.

All I want for Christmas . . . so begins many a famous Christmas song.  I remember as a kid always wanting the doll or the toy I saw on TV or in a magazine.  The pure excitement over what it would be like to have it and the joy of finding it under the tree.  I also remember that within a few days, I did not seem to want it so much any more.  The specialness of the things I wanted so much seemed to dissipate.  As I grew up I it took me a while to learn from this experience.  It is easy to get hooked by something we see and are certain we want.  There is an impending feeling in our chest that vibrates in our system and we are certain it is caused by the thing or person or experience.  These days, I notice when I get hooked into wanting something and I can pause and ask what it is I really want.  Usually what I am grasping for is a feeling.   I believe in my mind that the thing, person, or experience will cause me to feel what I want to feel.  I want to feel joy, satisfaction, wonder, hope, safe, in awe, confident, sacred, happy, powerful, engaged, connected, and most of all alive.  God wants these same things for us and not just at Christmas time.  God is wanting all the variations of the life experience for us even when we are disconnected from our wanting.  He also knows we will not ultimately find the feeling of being fully alive from anything outside ourselves.  God placed within our hearts the very things we want most.  She invites us to take the time to get to know this truth of who we are.  Perhaps the power of Christmastime is in its gift of permission to reawaken our desire and wanting of aliveness.

The beauty of the way God designed the world is in his instructions of how to be.  All throughout nature is the blueprint from which we can begin to look at who we are meant to be.  The movement of the trees, the dawning of a new day, the sharing of resources between the bees and the flowers, the living and the dying of leaves, the blowing of the wind, the cleansing rain, the shaking of the earth, and the flight of birds in a flock.  All are examples of the design for living.  As beings who walk and talk we sometimes imagine ourselves as separate from nature because we can think and perceive ourselves.  Yet it is our thinking that usually gets us in trouble.  Don’t we stand a better chance of making a contribution to the world when we take a step down from our head, take a breath into our hearts and use it as fuel through which to see ourselves and the world?  God instructs us through the experiences of our lives. Some of my greatest experiences are when I woke up to realize I was not following the instructions of my design for living. I had become like an IKEA product I put together incorrectly because I did my own thing instead of following the instructions.  I was a lopsided bookshelf or a table that falls apart because its missing a part.