dailydatewithgod

A bright shinning light lives within you.  A connection to All That Is moves through you.  A knowing of heart consciousness exudes from your very being.  God is in the flesh in you.  We never know in any given moment when we are being the love that we are for another person.  We expect it to happen in big and profound ways, but what if God does not have the same expectations?  What if God’s ways are much simpler than our own? What if the great mission of our being means we are to just be today?  If all you had to do to be successful today was be present in the moment you are in, would it be enough for you?  Would you think you had to do more to prove your worth?  Or might you be willing to trust that God’s creation in you is enough and just let it be?

Did you notice the sound today?  Our hearts pumping blood through our veins, air coming in and out of our nostrils, our being put on our skin, our teeth chewing our food, our nails scratching an itch.  Do you hear their rhythm today? Did you pay attention to which ones were louder or quieter?  Every facet of our lives seems to have a rhythm to it.  Some of it is so subtle that we can barely heart it. Some of it we just take for granted and don’t notice any more.  If this body we inhabit has all these sounds going on that we are oblivious to, what else in our lives have we tuned out?  What other rhythms and patterns are creating the soundtrack of our lives.  Even the silence has its own rhythm.  I remember one night on a retreat many years ago where in the stillness of the mountain I could hear the blood pumping though my veins and it was so loud, it was almost disturbing.  Yet I also sensed it was what united me with all of nature that I was presently standing in.  It was like an invitation to dance right there on the mountain top. What rhythms might we be able to tune into if we asked God to open our ears and our awareness to them?  What soundtracks of our lives could we be dancing to right this moment?

The truth of love is simple.  It exists.  It has no bounds.  It is beyond  our full understanding.  It moves and breathes in and through us at all times.  It binds us to each other, to ourselves and it shows up in the simplest of fashions when we least expect it.  Walking in a relationship with God means surrendering over and over to the magnificent power of love.  It means stepping back from the confusion of the world and remembering where we come from, who we are at our core and what is most important.  If we awaken to the power of love to transform our hearts our eyes will be opened to its simplistic presence over and over again in moments where we were previously unaware.  So what does this mean to our every day lives that get swept away by the complicated calls and pushes to do and improve and find fault?  To me it means over and over again with each breath asking God to open the eyes of my heart to the simplistic presence of love where it seems most absent.  God I do not see love in this annoying person, show me how you simply enjoy them.  God how can being in fear of my father entering my room at night show me the road to love now that I am on the other side?  God, I seem to have gone off course from my core at this moment because I cannot see love, show me how to return.

My prayer for us is a willingness to reach for the hand and power of God so that it can be placed on our hearts and touch the core of who we are once again this day.

If in the first moment of your day in which you recognized your release of your core you reached for the hand of God, what would you ask for? Share in the comments.

I am not sure if it comes from watching too much television as a kid or just wanting so much to not be where I was but somehow I entered adulthood with this distinction that tells me there is a problem if I don’t get the happy ending or the things are not tidy by the end.  Maybe it is part of the human condition.  I always thought it was my job to do things or behave in such a way that nothing bad could ever come from my actions.  I suppose it is a level of perfectionism but more than that it is a faulty idea that what is, is not what it is supposed to be. It was imparted to me by parents and teachers that learning was good and growth was good, but I missed the lesson on how to withstand trials.  When those processes of growth occurred, I learned to find fault with them. I figured I must have done something wrong to bring them on.  I must have deserved the challenge or trial.  The funny part is that it didn’t work the other way. When things came easy and worked out, I wasn’t allowed to take credit for having done things right.  It just happened or I got lucky.  Talk about a raw deal!  Mind you most of this was just the examination in my head.  There were certainly people in my life who acknowledged me and said thank you when I made a contribution, but I wasn’t able to internalize it.  I thought it would be immodest. Not being able to receive has been a huge learning curve in my life.  I am certain I am not the only person who has ever felt this way, but it is one of those thing that people don’t talk about.  As if to do so would mean that one was too stupid to have figured out that it is wacky thinking.  My date time with God has provided me with an invaluable experience of the power of showing up no matter what.  I am present every morning, whether I want to be or not.  I show up even if I don’t feel like it.  My head doesn’t stop the thoughts even once the entire meditation time but I sit there. Other times I feel angry, frustrated, ungrateful, but I present myself as is to God.  Then there are the times when I fall asleep.  However, every time I come out of our date with a sense that God appreciates my presence and sees it as valuable. In the consistency the fruits of love have grown.  Love for God, love for myself, love for others, love for nature, love of the process of life and yes, love of the imperfections of myself and others, and the day I am in.

God awakens the light of love in our hearts every time we turn to him to seek guidance.  We forget over and over that this light lives within us at all times.  It is ready for the enlightening of our lives and more importantly the thinking on our lives but we need reminders of its presence.  Sometimes these reminders come as trials, sometimes as enlightening experiences. I notice that when it comes through an enlightening experience my first thought is that of God.  When it comes through a trial my first thought is what I may have done wrong.  It is only recently that I have begun to digest the idea that it is the process the experience brings me to, not what gets my attention.  In other words, I do not need to waste time condemning myself for how my mind is being opened, but seize the opportunity to process into a reunion of the light of my heart.  Yet again a reminder that I am called to live humbly (be teachable) in a universe built around a curriculum of love.

Have you ever noticed that beauty draws you in quietly?  It stops you in your tracks and calls you to draw close.  Being a witness to beauty does not require hard action. It asks for quiet contemplation.  When something or someone strikes as beautiful we find ourselves mesmerized and wanting to be nearer.  No words are necessary and often we can’t find the right ones to describe what we are experiencing.  Our breath is suspended and time seems to stand still.  God sees all of creation as beautiful.  When I spend time on my date I am reminded of times in my day when I was a witness to beauty.  Then God reminds me that I am included in that beauty.  Now for a gal who grew up hearing the back-handed fat girl compliment , “You have such a beautiful face, if only . . . ” that was a little hard of an idea to accept at first.  Then I remember that all of nature has such grand beauty. I can see it in sunsets, flowers, little children, laughter, people embracing, fresh smelling roses, and the feel of rain drops on my face.  If God created all of those things and me, why wouldn’t I be included in that beauty?  God sees my heart and calls it beautiful because God knows the design and the depth of love that resides in it and has never faded no matter what I have done or not done.  If I am going to claim myself as a believer in God and acknowledge that God sees different from me, recognizing beauty in myself is a good place to start.  At the beginning of my day when our date starts God greets me with eyes of beauty and invites me to embrace it as the lens through which I see my day.  It is up to me to accept the invitation.  Today I will, will you?

Each day is a completely unknown beginning from which to conduct our lives.  We recognize that this moment has never happened before and never will again.  From this space of unknowing we have unlimited possibilities to embark upon.  So many different things and experiences can emerge.  Love can show up in a million different ways. Each new breath gives us this opportunity.  In theory this sounds wonderful.  But what if not knowing what was going to happen next was a scary thing? What if growing up one of the possibilities was danger, pain, or confusion? What if knowing that the danger, pain or confusion was less likely to happen because I kept on the lookout or behaved in a certain manner? As a kid I would give my life for that sense of certainty. To heck with limitless possibilities for good.  Knowing that it would not happen was my freedom.  Or so I thought.  The difficulty was that I used that same philosophy to apply to every part of my life, not just what happened at night at home.  I adopted the philosophy that I should know things even if it didn’t make logical sense.  The unknown meant danger, pain or confusion and I had already had enough of that.  Fast forward to living life in a world of mostly unknowns, trying to control and know things before I possibly could.  I would judge myself based on these unrealistic expectations and make myself wrong for not knowing in any area of life.  It is called living life in a box.  The paradox in my life was that I created this protective layer of weight around me to live inside a small life.  When I got into recovery I began to realize that shedding the seeming layers of protection also meant taking God’s hand and stepping outside the box even for just a little at a time.  You see the box had been around my heart, not my body.  As I have grown and learned about living life on life’s terms without hurting myself and making myself wrong I get to be okay with the unknown. I don’t always like it but I accept it and can distinguish it from my previous experience. It is a day at a time process but one that is so much more rewarding. Today when I start my day on my date with God I place in his hands all that is before me that is unknown and ask for the courage to be present  to the possibilities of love.