dailydatewithgod

The flow of life moves in and through our whole being all the time. As long as we are breathing, we are engaged in the flux of life.  We have an opportunity to engage in the power of the flux when we choose to align ourselves with the force of life.  Often I find myself stuck and frustrated and it is invariably because I am fighting the natural flow of a situation or moment.  I have predetermined ideas about how something is supposed to go and I am wedded to my expectations.  My daily dates with God have given me the chance to surrender to the power of the flux of life.  There is little point in being so firm on my ideas of how God will show up in and through my life because my mind simply cannot come up with all the possibilities   Like most human beings I get stuck on the form.  This was not the day I wanted off of work because in my head it would be better to have tomorrow off.  By staying focused on the specifics I could potentially lose the value of having some free time.  Dealing the other people is challenging at times.  We all show up with our fixed ideas and they come into collision with one another.  The pause and breath I learn in my daily prayer and meditation time allows me to take a step back and see more of where others are coming from.  I can recognize that all is actually happening is two children of God attempting to interact with one another. When I remember to do that I am surrendering to the flux of life in the interchange of energy of love between two people.  God’s mind does not operate in fixed measures so the moment I find myself focusing only on the form and getting out of the flux, I can pause, take a breath, put my hand on my heart and ask God, “How do you see this?“

They are sparkling and expensive, treasured and admired. Gems invoke a sense of wonder and awe because they show us light in a magical way. Gems represent the gift of seeing things as God sees things.  She sees all of creation as a gem. He finds all that is sparkling and of great value. She sees how worthy all of life is and will always be. He never loses fascination with his work.  God wants us to experience the same gems sense of life. When we take a moment to pause, breathe in spirit, and connect with our hearts we can quickly align ourselves with the gem of our hearts. It is fascinating to notice how our heart is beating and keeping us alive without us doing anything. This is just the physical gem. Going deeper in a moment of meditation as I have learned to do on my daily dates with God allows me to connect with the energy flowing in and out of my heart.  In that space I can embrace the gems of my dark spaces and yours.

It takes courage to show up and choose life.  We are called by God to play in the game of life.  Sometimes we know or think we know the rules and other times we learn as we go.  It is our willingness to embark on the journey of the unknown path.  There are bound to be twists and turns, not to mention stops and starts we could not possibly anticipate no matter our plans. Our decision to trust ourselves as playing a valuable role in showing up in the moment planned or not is the point.  There was a time in my life when I would hold myself back from embarking on a journey because I could not see or believe in the destination.  I did not understand the point was to be on the journey, wherever it takes me. The times I willingly embarked physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually with my whole self is when I knew the least about the outcome.  All I knew was I felt so broken and any alternative had to be better. I had dug myself into a hole of misery and I needed my whole self to embark on the path out no matter where it took me.

It is amazing the little signs of life that awaken our hearts.  I was sitting in a little park the other day and I saw a chicken with her six little chicks walk by.  It was fascinating how the little ones wandered around but never strayed far from their mama.  Every spec of dirt and grass had to be pecked at while they squeaked with delight. Then momma stopped and rested and they all hovered under the safety of her feathers.  I marveled how safe, warm, and loving it must have felt in there.  God creates the same space for us. God invites us to rest in her bosom of warmth.  God engages us in snuggling next to him and letting all the pecking of life go for just a few moments.  In this space we can hear our own hearts and know they are in resonance with our Creator’s heart.  All we need is a moment to remember the safe, warm, and loving place from where we came.

God has and continues to put forth love in our direction.  We were fashioned out of love and are cared for more than we can imagine. The concentrated force of life living within us is what enables us to walk freely and courageously into the experiences of our lives unharmed.  It may not seem as though we are harmed it is only a difference of perception.  In the mind of God we cannot experience anything that would undo the amount of love within us.  No interaction or exposure to lovelessness or fear or destruction can undo God’s design.  The concentration put forth in the birthing of our whole being defies worldly reality.  We can only touch upon the concentration level of love from which we were created and are still viewed by God.  One could say we suffer from being too watered down.  God is happy to invite us into the concentrated view of ourselves and others when we are willing to let go of our fixed mixture.

The immensity of love God has for us is beyond our comprehension.  God has the eyes through which to eternally witness our wholeness and purity.  No matter what we do or say can erase her perspective of us.  None of the things we imagine taint us are seen by him in the same light through which we see it.  We have developed the filters of the world which blocks us from seeing the purity and wholeness of ourselves and others.  There are some whom we put on a pedestal or experience when we first fall in love with someone or a newborn baby in which it is still seen by our eyes.  We seem to experience a fogging of lenses when it comes to the person next to us in the elevator or the driver in the lane ahead of us or even our own family members.  God encourages us to spend time with her where he can share her vision our own purity with us.  Then over time we will begin to notice a shift in our own eyes and see other’s purity and wholeness.

My daily prayer and meditation dates have taught me the value of turning things over in my life over which I have no control.  I communicate with God throughout my day but if there is something or someone niggling at me that I am holding on to it shows up in my inability to be present on our date.  I realize when it reaches that point I have exhausted all my options.  I cannot, no matter how much I read or write or talk or process see the goodness of the situation or person.  God offers throughout the process to take it off my hands but when I see how I am struggling to deal with it as hindering on our special time together, I am defeated and willing to let go. God does not see it as defeat.  God sees it as an opening to understanding the goodness of all.  God recognizes the ways and means I have attempted thus far but reminds me it need not be a struggle.  If I am wiling to let go of how it might happen, I can be open to goodness unseen.  It rarely unfolds the same each time and I suppose that is all part of the mysterious process of love as well.

If we know who we are in God it alters the course of our lives.  Claiming our origin and our connection to God not only allows us to step into our power but it keeps us from falling prey to the false beliefs about identity in the world.  We are men, women, sons, daughters, spouses, employees, bosses, Italian, Mexican, White, Black, Asian, and all the various labels we have for ourselves.  There is nothing untrue about claiming those origins and labels.  But they only represent part of the picture.  No one cultural line or role in life can define you.  No racial identity speaks of the magnificence of your spirit.  More often than not, it can be limiting.  We make assumptions about where we are supposed to be and with whom or how we are supposed to act or places not to go based on the world’s definition of us.  God does not live by limits.  God wants us to expand our horizons past the limiting perspective of the world and open ourselves up to experience love and growth in ways outside the confines of what is culturally or genderally acceptable.  Claiming our connection to God is the first step in this direction.  In the declaration of our hearts speaks the relationship of truth so we can love past the limits of what our world tells us defines love.

The beauty of a relationship with God is in his awareness of what we need before we know what we need.  She has the insight to our hearts and encourages us to speak from them.  What we often perceive as our needs is simply a different perspective from what God sees as needs.  We look upon ourselves with a level of deficiency   We presume there is something missing.  God shows us our neediness as what is missing from our perspective.  Our perception of what we are lacking is the perception that we can lack anything.  God reminds us we are connected to her and can therefore lack nothing.  Our intrinsic nature wholly connected to God will never be changed by our not believing in it.  God invites us to be in relationship with him and experience our neediness as the longing of our hearts to be closer to her.

From my daily prayer and mediation dates with God I have broadened and deepened my understanding of blessings.  I always interpreted the meaning of blessings to be good things.  I was focused on the end product only.  So when I experience frustrating and irritating people or situations I don’t think, “oh, what a blessing!”  Are you kidding me?  My immediate inclination is to hope it goes away quickly.  If my head is in a rough space to begin with, I start to go down the road of fear of how it’s never going to change and it’s all my fault.  Quickly it can turn to me wanting to completely check out and stack up protection around my heart.  Thankfully on our dates God has shown me the power of the pause.  By taking a breath, drawing my attention to my heart, and checking in with the One who knows my true self, I don’t have to go down the painful path.  God reminds me  there is always a blessing present, it just may look different from I was expecting. I see my willingness to stop and pause as a blessing.  I recognize my courage to feel whatever comes up as the situation unfolds as a blessing.  I can feel my heart open and breath into the whole of my body when I picture the person I am dealing with as the innocent child they are in their own hearts.  The blessings become less about what happens when it is all over and more about what is going on in the process of facing what looks like anything but a blessing.