dailydatewithgod

I spent a lot of my life working so hard to protect my heart.  I had been hurt and betrayed in the deepest way and since it happened I presumed it would happen again.  It did, not to the same extent, but the heart is fragile and when already bruised it is sensitive.  I figured since it was not guarded by God or anyone else, it was up to me.  The best I could do was to close it off.  As our dates progressed over the years, there was an awareness of an internal shift.  Sometimes it would occur  during our prayer and meditation dates and there were also more spectacular experiences of which I have written about previously. As the change was happening I pictured melting of ice and the release of the iron guard casing around it. Slowly I saw a vibrancy of color and softness hidden and present all along.  God was showing me I didn’t have to guard my heart because there was no guard needed that wasn’t already intrinsic to it.  The very nature of God creating and intricately designing my heart meant it was guarded by the forces of love.  My perception of it being badly wounded was simply the recognition of my heart’s energy of something foreign. As a child, it was the best decision I could make.  Now as an adult I can see that the very sensitive nature of our hearts allows it to pick up on energy of a different frequency.  But recognition does not mean bruising or breaking.  It means noticing.  God has an internal guard on our hearts so we may experience the fullness of love and everything it is touched by without changing its nature.  Our part is to not misperceive what is happening and with courage and strength bring the power of love to all that is and is not.

When I am faced with something to let go of in my life there is a sense of fear or impending doom. I suppose somehow that is natural unless of course it is something that I was only doing half-hearted.  The strongest calls to release something have come through my dating relationship with God.  It is not as though on our date the sky opens up and God says to me, “Colleen, let go”.  It is more of gentle sense that something whether a thing, a relationship, an idea, or a way of being has outlived its usefulness.  The fear comes when I am uncertain as to what will take its place.  Who will I be?  What will I do?  What does this mean about me?  God has shown me the call to release is a call to freedom.  Since I am only learning what true freedom is, it is an uncertain concept to me.  Living our lives attached to who we are on the outside in a limited universe means that if something is let go of there is a void.  What I find instead is an in between space where God meets me face to face.  Sometimes God holds me while I cry. Sometimes God laughs with me as I realize there is more room to connect with myself and what was I thinking holding on so tight.  Sometimes there is an unexpected understanding of God that lies beyond my own imagination.  Sometimes there is a quiet and a stillness and it feels like just me.  The space before the realization of freedom can be short or long but my daily dates have given me practice in sitting in the in between space while trusting in God’s wisdom of what is truly free for me.

There is a story in the Christian scriptures of Jesus on a boat with his disciples.  He is sleeping and they wade into a storm.  They scream for him to wake up and do something.  He gets up, moves his hand out towards the sea and instructs it to calm down.  Then he turns to them and asks why they were so alarmed and what happened to their faith.  God’s approach to the storms of our life is in complete contrast to our reaction.  God knows the difference between the calm of his love residing in our hearts and the storm we are experiencing outside of it. God is the knowing presence which reminding us that outside circumstances need not shake us at our core.  All we need to do is pause and connect with God to experience it in our hearts.  It comes when we rest in God’s certainty.  It is experienced when we take a breath and remind ourselves we are not our outside circumstances.  It is a hard lesson to learn.  It has taken me many years of dates to resonate more closely with the truth of my heart than my outside experiences. We are surrounded by messages all throughout the world, telling us we are all the elements outside of our hearts.  God isn’t the one who needs to wake up and do something about the situation.  We are called to wake up to the reality in our hearts.  Taking the time to cultivate the inner awareness of our connection to God enables us to approach life with a sense of calm.  This calm allows us to be unshaken by every little bump or storm. It doesn’t mean pretending everything is okay.  It is a boldness of dealing with the storms because they are the reality facing us, but detaching enough so we do not see them as a reflection of who we are.  It is easy to label ourselves by our experiences but God invites us at every breath to choose instead our inner calm reality of the love with which we were made.  It reminds me of an experience I had a while back.  I pictured Jesus holding me close and comforting me.  As I rested my head on his chest I saw the sacred heart with the thorns around it right there on his chest.  I asked him if it hurt and he smiled, looked me in the eye and said, “only when I believe its real”.  We all have our thorny experiences wanting to penetrate our inner core, but we can see them for the illusions they are and choose to believe in God’s truth of who we are anyway.