dailydatewithgod

When we determine that life is no longer satisfying or it has become dull it is because it seems to have lost some of its lackluster quality. The ordinary seems overly plain and even boring.  We feel like we are some kind of machine and are simply going through the motions.  Sometimes we can experience the lack of sharpness of life with the course of a day.  Sometimes it lasts longer.  Some periods in our lives can feel consumed by the dullness of life.  Until we wake ourselves up or get woken up to the edges of our lives or find ourselves bumping into them does the sharpness return.  When we remember to look for the sharp edges things stand out. They have a light to them we did not see before,and more importantly we step out of going through the motions.  Sure, there are things we all have to do that we do not look forward to or feeling.  Running from them, ignoring them, or losing site of their potential to keep us awake is where we get lost.  God presents us with all kinds of sharpness in our day-to-day experience.  Focusing on the edges of shapes and sizes, colors and textures, and felt sense of things can bring us back to life.  Taking a step back requires a pausing and breathing.  Putting the spirit of life in our very body system will open our eyes to begin to see the sharpness again.  Suddenly light has a pungency, people’s ideas have meaning, and life comes back to life with a little attention paid to the sharpness.  Viewing our everyday ordinary experiences through the lens of the sharp elements we see sharpens our attitude and our sense of being in the world.

One of the signs that I am living a life in recovery is remembering there are alternatives.  When I was in my addiction there were typically two options.  There was not alternative than the story I had in my head.  It was not safe to check with alternatives because you might tell me I was wrong and mistaken.  This would confirm my story about myself that I was a mistake and I was wrong.  It is a difficult space to live in physically, emotionally, and physically.  I am grateful for the breakdown of the ridiculous and unsustainable system of living.  I am grateful it broke for me functionally before it broke me and robbed me of my life entirely.  God continues to be the best alternative that exists. The moment I reach for God and ask, “God, show me how you see this.  Is there something here I am to learn?  God, I am open to a new perspective, be gentle and guide me in my heart to this new perspective.”  Any of those alternatives give me a chance to live with discovery and openness to growing my heart to light of life.

One of my favorite songs from the Disney movie, Mulan, is “Reflection.”  The young Mulan wonders if and when she will be able to allow who her heart knows her to be reflected on the outside.  Our hearts are constantly reflecting within us the truth of who we are.  We get fooled because we look in a mirror through the eyes of our mind and think what we see must be what is most important.  Sometimes we reach a point in our lives when the contrast is so great, we are no longer looking at what is reflecting in a mirror.  I know I reached that point when I was in the darkest spaces of my addiction years ago.  I never stopped to look at my eyes that were reflecting in the mirror back at me , let alone sit with how incongruous my being felt to my heart.  Honestly, I did not have to see the reflection, I knew it in my bones.  But I did not know how to get back into alignment with my heart.  It was the reaching over 300 pounds, the addiction to sugar, and the discomfort in and self-hatred of my own body that led me to seek a different path.  Yet if my heart and spirit were not broken, I may have been able to continue on for a little while.  Perhaps until my body gave out completely.  I believe it was the light of life flickering in my heart telling me that what I was reflecting on the outside to the world did not match.  It was the still quiet hushed voice of God knocking at the door of my heart with each breath and each beat.  When I could no longer look away from the image being reflected back at me, I stopped and dared to listen.  I am grateful for the constant beating of my heart, not only because it keeps my body alive but because it is a constant reminder.  Breath by breath, moment by moment, keep checking to make sure what I am reflecting to the world and to myself on the outside is the truth of who I am at heart.

Given the distance we often seek from one another and the hiding we do in relationships it is hard for us to imagine a God who desires to enfold our very being.  We spend a lot of energy buffering our experience with others.  We do it to protect our hearts, keep our identity in good standing, and avoid looking foolish.  Yet, when we see demonstrations of love overtaking all of our protections we are moved.  We recognize there is something real happening.  Without realizing it there is a consciousness that the people we are watching have the courage to let down their guard and let their heart show.  God’s enfolding nature is within our hearts already.  It is why God wants to keep it alive in our minds as well as our being.  When we realize we are in a vulnerable emotional space we have a decision to make.  Do we risk staying with it and seeing what happens as we interact with each other and the world or do we shut down as quickly as possible?  Many of us learned to shut down so quickly we do not recognize the choice when it appears.  I know I did.  My daily dates with God have opened me up to be more courageous because God is ready and willing to enfold me with more love as I practice living from my heart. God has got me on this one.  God has placed a calling in our hearts to make room for our vulnerability and is willing to enfold us with more love than we can imagine as we take the risk and let down our guards.

The good news about things coming to an end is they make way for new things to begin.  If we do not fall, there is nothing to rise from.  The emergence of our lives in the present come from what we have overcome in the past.  We cannot credit the way we rise without acknowledging what we have risen from.  Sometimes we want to gloss over what got us to the emergence of our lives currently, but it is not the whole story.  What is the point of rising from ashes to emerge a new person if we pretend there was no fire.  It leaves the story of our lives incomplete.  It does not have to be dramatic, just an acknowledgment of the reality.  I know sometimes I would rather leave out the part about being over 300 plus pounds but I would be lying if the significance of my emergence as a woman in a healthy body did not come from there.  I have no desire to go back there for many reasons not the least of which is the physical burden.  Recognizing our emergence as dependent upon what we emerged from puts us in a place of gratitude.  I do not know if I had not reached the weight I did and experience the emotional and spiritual bankruptcy that went with it, if I would have turned my life around.  I value the life that has emerged out of the ashes more than I can say.  To live, breathe, and feel is such a gift.  Even when it is hard, it is a gift.  I would much rather face all of life soberly than go back to the numbing fog I was living in with a shut down heart and bracing many moments with fear.  Emergence as a whole human being takes energy and effort to maintain and I do not always want to do it.  Remembering what I emerged from reminds me it is worth it.

Getting to the bottom of things seems to be the goal.  At least when we are trying to figure something out or figure out who we are. I presume it is because when we get to the bottom there is no further to go. One hopes that all the answers are there but often there are just more questions.  Just because we reach the bottom does not mean we have traveled the journey.  Penetrating the experience and all the factors involved calls for looking for more than a straight simple answer.  Penetrating our lives requires us to go beyond the bottom.  It asks us to connect with something even deeper.  To move past what we can see into what is happening energetically.  As human beings we have more than just our physical senses which provide input and influence on our lives.  Tuning into our interoception (sensing what is happening in our body and proprioception (sensing where we are in space and relation to things around us), gives us a penetrating insight into how we are showing up in the world.  Then there is the sense of being that comes from our hearts.  Penetrating into our hearts asks us to let go of our mind’s inclination to get things figured out and connect with more than who we think we are.  God lives in our hearts and is constantly beating through all of our existence with a penetrating love that goes beyond what we can perceive.  Allowing ourselves to pause and connect with the energy of our hearts provides a lens of perspective beyond what we think or know as possible.

Our presence in the world is a gift.  A gift from God to us and to others.  We are all gifts.  Even if we do not see it, God does.  Why would a loving being bother creating us if not for the purpose of delivering love to the world?  Unfortunately, experiences over time cause us to believe what the world delivers and expects us to deliver and we change our own story.  We measure ourselves by our physical outcomes and deliveries instead of the measurement of our heart’s delivery.  I know I tried really hard to deliver on being the person I thought I was supposed to be based on my circumstances.  I almost killed myself trying to do so because I thought I had to numb myself from the whispers of my heart to make it happen.  In the end I could not deliver on what I thought I was supposed to.  Shutting down my heart to make the delivery came at too great a cost.  Thankfully , I found a way back to my heart and began to discover what the love in my heart I had blocked off access to intended me to be delivering.  It is hard to let the world go a little quieter and tune ourselves into our hearts whispers.  Sometimes the world has to come crashing down around us for us to find our way.  In the rubble God is there to meet us and guide us back to our hearts. It does not matter how we attempt to get back to the message our heart is delivering as long as we keep making the attempt to do so.

In an attempt to be mindful about our experiences in life one of the first things to notice are the number of thoughts that run through our heads.  It is a non-stop barrage or a ticker-tape parade going on in the mind at all times.  Some mindfulness practices or meditation claim the absence of thought as the ultimate nirvana.  It could be, not sure I have gotten to that point yet.  However, for many who attempt a mindfulness or meditation practice, they think they are doing it wrong because they notice all the thoughts running through their head.  We all have to start somewhere.  We are often not aware of how many thoughts are present in our minds at any given time.  Taking a look can be a bit overwhelming at first.  But if we do not look, we cannot know what we are dealing with.  I have learned on my daily prayer and meditation dates with God that it is about being thoughtful about my thoughts.  My inclination when I am unaware of them is to believe all of them, to take them as truth because they are going through my mind.  Having thoughtfulness is about consciously choosing which thoughts are worth the energy to latch on to.  Thankfully I remember once in a while to not take myself so seriously and laugh at some of the thoughts that run through my mind.  Statistically speaking, there is no way they are all true or even real.  It is like the mind is trying to quantify its existence by coming up with thought after thought after thought.  With God’s help and remembering to pause and breathe I can take a closer look at choose to explore the thoughts that work for me.  Being thoughtful about fear is rarely helpful unless I am actually in some kind of danger.  Being thoughtful about hope works better.  The thoughtfulness our hearts calls us to are focusing on the thoughts that bring love every closer into the picture.  Thoughtfulness begins with ourselves and when we are able to latch on to the ones that work for us, we can extend thoughtfulness to others.

It can be hard to determine if we are struck by something simply because of the moment we are in or if it is something that always strikes us.  We can find ourselves vexed by similar situations but because the outside circumstances seem so different we do not make a connection.  Then there are those times when we feel vexed by everything.  I am easily drawn to over-analyze everything.  It is part of my hyper vigilant nature and I am not alone in this characteristic.  In an effort to not find myself vexing over getting vexed by things and people who do not sit well with me in the moment, I came up with a strategy.  I call it my three-time rule and I use it for many different elements in my life.  If something happens once or twice I let it slide but if I find something vexing in my experience three times or more I take a closer look.  I begin to ask questions, why am I vexed by this?  God, is there some kind of message wrapped up in this irritation?  Is it possible to see the vexing from a different angle?  Am I vexed when it occurs after another experience in particular or does it vex me no matter when it happens?  Sometimes I need to vent my anger on paper or write one of my f-you letters that I do not send to get out the feelings that are triggered by the vexing.  Then I can engage the investigation with a clear mind and an open heart.  I can turn to God and ask, what is there to love about this vexing?  Is it possible to bring love and tolerance to this vexing situation?  My peace of mind and openness of heart is ultimately up to me.  No amount of vexing experiences can determine who I show up as in my life.  We can all choose to define ourselves by the vexing or the delights.  I need God’s help in remembering that the vexes can be delights in disguise when I see them through the lens of my heart.

According to A Course In Miracles, a miracle is a shift in perception.  It reminds me of what Victor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search For Meaning, ” the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” I know if I am seeing life through the lens of fear I do not see anything fruitful or worth living through.  I find my attitude tainted and despite my best efforts it is hard to see the forest through the trees.  It is in those moments when swapping my perspective for God’s is called for.  It is the moment when as Casting Crowns sings, “There is a place where fear has to face the God you know.”  I am asking God to swap my thinking with God’s.  It can be in big and small ways and at no moment does God resist providing the miraculous perspective.  It often does not come until I reach a moment of feeling I have lost control.  No matter what I do, I am not able to swap my perspective with another one.  A perspective which allows me to see the gift of life in the smallest ways making love visible again. I turn to God with an outstretched hand which God directs to my heart.  The swapping from fear to love begins with a new breath.  In the breath from my heart, my eyes begin to open to a new perspective where I am not in this alone and I begin to remember the miracle of love present all around me.