dailydatewithgod

When we are drained of our own resources we find ourselves in a seemingly bad spot. Yet it can be the very moment from which great transformation can occur.  Empty and with nothing to bring to the table we are open to receiving what God has to give.  So often the problem is not that God does not want to give love and so much more to us, but we are full of so many other things, there is no room. I remember early on in my recovery when it dawned on me that I had been so busy filling myself with food to solve my problems, there was no room for God’s solutions.  Further along I acknowledged I had let my heart get filled with anger and grief and built a wall around it.  It was a childhood concoction of safety.  I did not leave any way for God to show me how to reconnect with what was truly there.  Our emptiness makes us willing to learn like a child learns.  There is no expectation, there is no previous knowledge with which to compare.  A child is simply willing to be filled up.  When we find ourselves in situations with adults we rely on, we allow ourselves to be filled up with whatever they have to offer.  Then we decided it must be what we deserve as did they.  God has a grander plan than that.  Maturing in my relationship with God has meant emptying myself of old and painful ideas of love and safety in exchange for what God has offered.  For me, it was not until my tank of what I knew ran empty that I was willing to let God truly fuel me with his love.

My prayer for us is the courage to allow ourselves to come to God from a place of emptiness and receive the love we are designed for today.

In certain Christian circles, we hear the term saved used.  It is often described like a once in a lifetime after which everything is wonderful.  Unfortunately, it is also something that has and can be used as an exclusionary factor.  Christians separate those who are saved versus those who are not.  As a Catholic Christian, it was not a term we used often.  I had a priest friend who would say we were salvaged.  I was raised to believe that while baptism was a cleansing of my spirit, it was more about a daily relationship with God.  I am not going to get into a religious debate about the pros and cons of different approaches to God.  I believe God meets each of us in a way we can understand on our own path.  As a child, I thought being saved meant being rescued from my circumstances.  The daily building of the relationship would somehow enable me to avoid certain circumstances and pain.  Today I recognize this as young thinking.  As I have grown and dealt with hardships in my life, I see how God has been present all along when I remembered to look for God.  Knowing God can save me from my thinking about a circumstance or person far outweighs the seeming relief of being rescued from a situation.  It is humbling to admit, but some of the worst experiences I have been through shaped me the most.  Only by facing the layers of messy perceptions about who I am as a woman and as a sexual woman who I came up with in order to survive the incest do I get to experience the power of forgiveness and self-compassion.  Only in desiring to forgive my father have I learned to experience true peace and grace that comes from the willingness to pray even absent of the belief of possibility of it doing anything.  It was only when I was about to flunk out of college that I saw my resiliency in walking through a time of loss in my life and still managed to show up and do what needed to be done.  When I remember to bring God into whatever it is I am facing, I know I stand a chance of walking through it in wholeness. God is the one who can save me from the dark and winding road of my thinking that cannot see the forest through the trees.  It is a daily practice and sometimes a moment to moment one.  God, show me how you see this.  God, help me to see this differently.  Two simple prayers which save me each time I use them.

Perception is a funny thing.  It can take something completely innocuous and turn it into a bad or good experience based on our perception.  Martin Luther King once said, “There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.” As I began my recovery journey many years ago I heard a similar idea expressed in 12 step literature and really connected with it.  It allowed me to have the experience of being and feeling both good and bad at the same time.  We experience things as we are in the moment.  If I am focused on what I am grateful for and aware of I perceive the situations in my life as blessings.  If I am focused on all that seems to be going wrong and all the bad that exists in the world, I perceive situations as being negative and want to get out of them.  Growing up I would try to focus on the positive side of things and got labeled as a Pollyanna.  At the time it was a product of not having a skill set on how to be with the negative.  In order to focus on the positive I would discount and push down the negative.  I thought it could only be one or the other.  God helps me be with all of whom I am and experiencing.  Being in the space of blessing makes room for what is authentically happening while simultaneously making room for God to be present.  Being from blessing is a belief that no matter what is going on, God is constant.    No amount of negative emotions or experiences removes the power of love’s presence.  We are blessed because God is alive in us, through us, and always with us.  No outside circumstance, no matter how daunting can change who and what God is.

We have all probably been told or heard that we have one mouth and two ears and to use them proportionately.  In the same way, we have two eyes.  They work together to create a vision of what we see, but what we see with our eyes is not often what our mind tells us we are seeing.  When we take the time not only to see but to observe there is greater usage of those two eyes.  There is a pause between what we are taking in through our eyes and what we are interpreting what we see to mean.  At the end of the day we no longer know what we have seen, we only know what meaning we made from what we have seen.  We think we record things like a camera but our brains are not designed that way.  Some people do have a photographic memory but most of us lean on our observations.  Observing gives us the power to stop and digest the information coming in through our eyes before we assign meaning.  We can recount to another what we are observing in the moment before we tell them or ourselves what we think it means.  Often we rush to the meaning before taking in the full picture from the multiple angles accessible to our eyes.  If we use the full spectrum or our two eyes we have more information from which to make meaning.  Just think about how our vision is limited the moment we close one eye.  The same picture looks different and we are missing some things we could see with two eyes.  If we do not use our peripheral vision, our sight is also limited. Giving ourselves the space to observe leaves room to bring God into the interpretation instead of latching on to an already assigned meaning in our minds.  God is fully present to us in the moment. Observing keeps us in the moment a little bit longer.

God is our guide in the light.  We are shown the path to follow when we choose to believe in the light and have the courage to step out of the darkness.  We will not see the path in the dark.  Many of us, myself included, became so used to the darkness we had convinced ourselves we were in the light.  It was not until we stumbled one more time in the darkness that we made a decision to see what other options were available.  God’s light of love brings the power of love to whatever darkness we are experiencing.  When we are used to darkness the light can hurt at first until our eyes adjust.  God is the force that gives us the grace to make room for the light.  I remember years ago when I found myself in a very dark moment.  I was in pain and overwhelmed emotionally as I began to see the truth of some of the harrowing experiences of my past for what they were.  Even though they were no longer happening, my heart hurt at the recollection of the experience which kept flashing in my mind over and over so much so I could no longer blissfully deny the pain.  The pain was in my body and in my soul and I could feel the feelings I had denied so many years ago welling up.  I called a friend, crying and angry and she listened with a warm heart.  She had no solutions but she was familiar with the pain of sexual abuse.  She held the space of the possibility of a time of freedom from the past.  She gently reassured me that in reaching out to her and in letting myself be present and honor the experience I was poking holes in the darkness.  She affirmed from her own experience that the more holes I poked, the more light would be able to come in.  When the light illuminated my heart, body, and soul, I was shown the next step in my path.  I will never forget that afternoon for many reasons.  I was shown by God through my friend’s kindness that there is a way through any experience no matter how dark.  Today when I get  flash of this past occurrence, I see it for what it is and am grateful to recognize the transformation that has occurred in my life as a result of following the path of love I am shown one day at a time.

The clarity from which God operates is something foreign to us.  Our minds seem to enjoy the vagueness.  We are invited to step into the precise reality of God’s understanding with each new day. On our daily dates God opens the door for me to sit with him in the precision of love.  Her clarity of what love is, how it is, and its presence in me even when I do not feel connected to it is profound.  God shows me how to be with this precision and how it evaporates all that stands in contradiction to it.  Love is precisely what it is because of who God is and nothing that takes place in this world can defy this truth.  So much of the noise of the world from unjust political systems to racial inequality, poverty to the advance weapon systems, generations of hatred to everyday irritations tell the story of the falsehood of love.  God’s precision cuts right through the world’s madness and offers the clarity of the power of love.  With it we can courageously endure the world with the same precise belief in the presence of love because we believe the presence of God through us.

God is in the story of our lives for the long haul.  God is in the story of our lives for this moment. Being present in this moment is what enduring through life is all about.  We live out the course of our lives in moments.  Moments we can choose to be present for or those from which we check out.  The endurance of God’s love for us is that he is fully present at every moment and holds the space for us to endure the energy to be fully present as well.  Yet, God does not despair or punish us when we choose to give up before the moment occurs or check out and not be present.  She simply provides us with the next moment, inviting us to choose differently.  A life of love requires endurance. At the outset we may think this endurance applies to being able to walk through the unloving experiences with others.  Endurance is needed to find a way to the peace in our hearts. God has taught me through our daily prayer and meditation dates that when I am at peace with my own heart, I am not swayed by others lack of peace.  The ever-giving essence of love which God designed in each one of us from the start is still there.  We get disconnected from it and think it is because others did something or because of certain experiences.  Then we buy into the stories layered on top of our hearts and think it is who we really are.  Yet, what God creates cannot be undone.  We are no less the image or design of God today than when we took our first breath.  By owning who we are as creations of God, we are reconnecting with the essence of true selves.  We are connecting with the enduring nature of God within us.  Nothing outside of us can change us.  God has the endurance to withstand believing I am who I am as a result of something other than what she created.  Perhaps he can show me how to live this same enduring belief and all I have to do is believe in God’s capacity for endurance.

There is an endearing song, “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face,” from the musical My Fair Lady.  Professor Henry Higgins shares his realization that he will miss and I would argue has fallen for his student, Eliza Doolittle.  The song conveys a tenderness, when he shares how he has become accustomed to her face, her voice, her moods and it is like breathing in and breathing out.  God is accustomed to all of us before we were fully formed.  God has an even greater endearing love for us. For all of us.  God is accustomed to his love for us.  She delights in all of who we are.  God is accustomed to the love designed within us.  Being our creator, God, much like Henry, cannot avoid the fact that she is accustomed to our presence and takes delight in our being.  It is who God is no matter what we may do or say in contradiction to our true selves. God wants to show us how to become accustomed to our own hearts.  The truest parts of ourselves are the endearing and lasting impact we make on the world from our hearts.  When we separate from one another we are left with what we have become accustomed to about others.  When we step out of our thinking about others and focus on what we recall about their hearts, we realized we are accustomed to love.

All around us are forces providing information and ideas.  We don’t even need to turn around and face them, they are coming at us from all sides and through every avenue.  It can be overwhelming when trying to determine which to let in or consider valid.  If we do not know how to be beside ourselves, how can we know what is meaningful for us and what is just information?  On our daily dates when God is beside me I get the practice of what it means to be beside myself.  Do I have a sense of who I am at my core?  What I do think and feel about something before I am influenced by someone outside of me?  It is important for us to develop our own sense of what it means to be in our own corner.  At a young age, when nothing in my world made sense, my best option was to abandon myself.  I learned quickly to adapt to others expectations and ideas.  When I did have my own, I was careful how much I voiced them and would check others for their level of acceptance.  I learned to talk quickly or mumble when I could not hide what I really felt or thought.  I thought because I had a number of experiences where those who were important to me could not stand beside me that I must not be worth it.  As I live as an adult woman some of those well-developed defense mechanisms are still strong.  It takes patient and persistent effort to be someone who is willing to be beside herself no matter what.  When I cannot do it and I want to run (which never really works), I turn to God and say, Help me not abandon me.  Show me what it means to stand beside myself and ride this wave through.  Then I take a deep breath and stand amidst the discomfort of the waves of unknowing in practicing a new behavior.  I am grateful it gets easier with time and with God ready to be beside me each day on our dates, I get a reminder that I am worth the effort.

I have noticed that we tend to evaluate ourselves based on what we have received more than on what we have given.  Is it because we cannot give physical demonstration of what we have given because we no longer have it?  Is it because it is seen as trying to seem saintly or better than? Maybe giving is less complicated than we make it seem.  Maybe giving and receiving are both essential for the flow of life to occur. Our bodies and systems seem to think so.  If we only take breaths in, we will explode.  If we only let breaths out we will die from oxygen starvation.  Being giving is as fundamental to us as exhaling yet we look to it to measure our worth.  It seems to be another symptom of needing to have evidence that we are on the right track and we meet with others approval.  Even when we give we want acknowledgment.  I am not saying this is wrong but as someone who used giving as a way of validating her place on the planet, I had it out of whack.  Once I understood that my value as a human being was evident in the fact that God took time to create me, I could let go of needing to prove I was worthy.  Giving and receiving play a vital role in us being able to move through life.  Breathing in, breathing out.  If I can give from the whole of who I am instead of looking to receive acknowledgment that I am okay because I am giving, then others are free to receive the gifts.  On our dates, God reminds me through my breath that I am here, I am worthy, and I am connected to the whole and flow of life.  God is ready to remind all of us first through our giving and receiving of the breath.