dailydatewithgod

We do not realize the power of the connections with have with other people.  Biologically on an unconscious level we are designed so it is not even a choice that we make to stick close to those whom we know. The attachment creates a level of safety so we are able to grow and develop on all levels.  Then there comes the time to step way from the tribe and see ourselves as distinct from one another.  We are called in maturity to detach from others so we can align ourselves with who we are designed to be.  To make a contribution as the gift of who we are to the world we need to know ourselves separately.  It feels like a contradiction to detach from those we feel most at home with but it is ultimately in greater service to be fully who we are and love them from that place.  The place where we are aligned with our creator and not attached to anything of this world means we are operating from the power of love which is knows no bounds.

There are many gifts which we do not see as gifts.  They come in wrapping that looks like garbage or something that needs to be given to good will.  If it is given to us we want to reject it because all we see is the outer covering.  There are no pink ribbons or sparkly wrapping paper.  They show up as people who irritate us or tell us what to do.  They show up as experiences that if given the option we would have skipped them all together.  That doesn’t look like fun let alone a gift!  What is God thinking?  Why in the world would anyone call engaging in this experience or interaction a gift?  In my experience unwrapping the deterring packaging of incest and obesity is that the gift is what comes from the process of looking underneath the wrapping.  Ultimately, we discover who we are, what we are capable of, and that we are the gift.  We begin to know ourselves as God does and recognize that we are not tarnished by the wrapping.  The gift we are is still inside of us.  Nothing that happens to us can ultimately transform the gift God has made us to be.  Not even the things we take on ourselves.  I know this one all too well.  I spent many years trying to hurt myself with food.  Yet no amount of pizza and cookie dough to compound the self-hatred and disgust with my body made a dent in the beautiful soul of light and life that lives within my heart.  I had to do my part and be willing to walk through the uncomfortableness of what it would be like without all that wrapping.  I had to want to find a gift in the mess. God was the whispered heart beat that kept me inching in that direction so that one day I would have the courage to open up.  The reason I go on my daily dates with God is it is easy for my mind to pull me back into thinking I am the wrapping.  God leads me back to my heart every time, no questions asked, enabling me to see the gift of love and light alive and well within me.

The gracious part about a daily relationship with God is it enables me to verify to my questioning mind the consistency of God.  There is no question of God’s everlasting presence except in my head sometimes.  Because we live in an ever-changing world full of duality the way God operates seems to not match.  How could a being possibly be there at every turn?  Isn’t it in our nature to abandon?  It may be in our nature, but God is not our nature.  Verifying that God does not operate in the same way keeps me coming back to my heart.  My heart is always beating. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow.  It pushes the nourishment provided by my breath through my system to keep it going.  I do not often stop to think about it or verify it, but it continues.  God is the same way.  Often times when we see God as a being that cares from a distance or who does not really seem to show up, what we are experiencing is human.  We easily place human qualities on God.  Yet God is not capable of existing in just human form.  God embodies the very essence of love which holds no boundaries.  Verifying how God thinks can be done as easily as recognizing what is the flip side of how I think.  I can ask myself a simple question: is what I am experiencing an opportunity to know love or grow in love?  If the answer is yes, I am in the space of verifying God’s presence.  If the place I am in is pushing love away or seeing everything as other or separate, I am stuck in human perspective.  Taking a step back allows for the verification of God’ perspective which allows more breathing room and more life.

I have noticed in conversation the idea of extending oneself divulges into over-extending oneself.  People are advised to not extend themselves because they can quickly become overextended.  But it does not just happen.  Extending is part of our nature.  It is both touching a greater area as well as being a gift to someone.  As human beings, creations of the designer of love, we are meant to be extending as a part of our inherent nature.  If we never extend ourselves we cannot move, we will not engage, we will shut down and become constricted.  Even a heart beating is extending itself by moment to moment becoming more expansive in size.  Breathing extends our life and our ability to speak and sing.  Using our limbs is a way of extending our presence. The idea that we are over-extending ourselves is about putting ourselves out past the point of still being connected to our core.  It depletes our energy, our ability to know our purpose, and ends up hindering the extending we were attempting in the first place.  God did not design us to lose connection with our own hearts when being kind to others.  If we are hurting ourselves by taking care of others we have stepped into over-extending our hearts.  God invites us to always remain rooted in the truth of who we are.  We are designed to extend that to others but not at the expense of losing ourselves.  God knows us to be the extension of love created out of love.  When we walk rooted in this reality we can extend much past what we think we are capable of because our hearts are connected to our Creator.  Over-extending is us taking ourselves out of the range of our own design.

We come across ideas or experiences that we just cannot wrap our heads around.  No matter which angle we look from, it does not make sense. There seems to be a missing piece.  No matter how hard we try, we simply cannot fathom the reality expressed through the idea or experience.  We look for more evidence, we ask more people, and ultimately we find ourselves giving up on ever understanding.  Then in the moment of surrender there is an avenue which opens us up to a new perspective.  The fathoming occurring in moments such as these is the perspective of the heart.  Only when we have exhausted our minds and played it over and over that we let down our guard and our heart is able to get a word in edge-wise.   What previously seemed unfathomable is brought to light.  Often we are dumbfounded and wonder how we did not see it before.  It is a beautiful moment of enlightenment which only a breath before seemed dark and cloudy.  This is how God works in our lives.  It is party of the mystery of love and light.  It is the opportunity to take part in the story of love as written by our Creator.  Given that God knows our hearts before we even know we have them or what they can do, I am inclined to walk through the strange process of fathoming. The path of fathoming shows my willingness to engage in the mystery and the hope to strengthen my heart’s awareness.  It is a leap of faith to trust in God’s timing also known as the timing of my heart.  After many years of daily dates with God it is not less of a risk but I have never been disappointed when the fathoming kicked in.

Because we have so much coming at us all the time, most of gets filtered out.  If we had to process everything that came into our awareness we would be exhausted.  It is incumbent upon us to pause and observe what is happening. It is another layer of not letting it in but just looking at it.  It is a degree of separation before we feel we have to react to something.  When we are observing we are making note of something but not getting hooked into the story which is the meaning we make of it. Our power in owning the story of our lives begins when we choose to observe something before buying into it.  It makes sense when dealing with things outside of us but what about what is happening in our own minds?  How many of us stop and simply observe the thoughts that run through our head or the feelings that we sense in our bodies?  It may sound too simplistic but we give ourselves room to choose when we pause and observe.  We can evaluate things from different angles. Even if we do get hooked and believe the thought or the feeling by a commitment to observing we can back ourselves out of it before taking action.  On my daily dates with God, it is a time to observe without judgment.  God does not judge our thoughts or feelings and encourage us to do the same.  By observing we can notice patterns and well-formed systems that we do not realize are going on inside of us.  When the theme running behind the story of an event is showing up again and again we are given insight into a belief we have about ourselves.  If we take time observing the story as the writer instead of the main character, we are able to give ourselves some space.  This space of the breath allows us to choose whether or not we want to continue with the same story or create a new one.

In a world of comparison and duality we tend to value the greatest, the highest, the grandest versus the worst, the lowest, and the simplest.  Perhaps there is a deeper reason for the reaching of the summit or obtaining of greatness.  Perhaps it is something within us moving us towards our highest good and being our highest selves.  I believe it is the spirit of God within us.  We can get caught up in the world’s definitions of the highest and actually end up operating from our lowest selves.  Our true highest sense of self is the embodiment of love and compassion.  It achieves and makes things happen but not necessarily by winning accolades or overcoming massive obstacles. Being our highest selves is about being in the moment.  It is the moments when we are in touch with our hearts and with the one who created us to be our highest selves.  Depending on the moment we are in our highest self may look like being the star, having the final say, or getting the recognition. Or it could be walking away from a chance to the star, keeping our mouth closed, and work that goes unacknowledged. One is not better than the other.  It is simply what is being called upon us by our hearts in the moment we are in.  When we are operating from our highest sense of ourselves we are in alignment with our hearts and the energy created by it has no measurement in our world.  I hesitate to try to describe it further because it will not be the same for you.  We each have the inherent knowledge of what it means to show up as our highest selves in any given moment. It is part of our design. When we take the time to pause and check in with our hearts, the more we can operate from this reality and elevate those around us.

Those of us who have been driving a car long enough know the impact of visibility to get where we are going.  When there is rain, fog, or snow visibility is impaired.  We are not able to see exactly where we are going because the our visibility is blocked.  The same thing happens when we rely solely on our physical eyes in seeing our life.  What we see can be clouded by our feeling, our thinking, and our fixed state of mind.  The eyes of our heart are also impacted by our thoughts and feelings.  Visibility is restored when we open ourselves up to the love of God freely offered in the moment.  But both can be clouded over.  We need the visibility of our eyes and our hearts to operate fully and with love in this world.  When we are willing to acknowledge the ways our visibility is blocked we have taken the first step towards inviting God in to restore our vision.  It may not take the form we imagine but our visibility can be renewed and we end up seeing like never before.

One of the first things I heard in the rooms of recovery that I entered over 16 years ago is: “Acceptance is the answer.”  It reminded me of a poem I read many years before by Virginia Satir entitled “I AM ME” .  The poem speaks about the concept of self-acceptance.  I was struck by it as a young person but did not really take in or believe it.  In my experience it begins by validating what we are experiencing before we do anything else.  I am so used to judging what I am thinking, feeling, and doing  I will bypass the opportunity to just call it out for what it is.  There is great power in validating one’s experience.  Another expression I learned along the way was, “Name it, claim it, dump it.”  If I cannot even validate by naming what is happening, how can I take responsibility for it and let it go? Moving forward in life requires us to name where we are first.  When I have my date time with God it begins with just being with what is. God is not judging it. I might be but my heart has softened over the years.  At least when I jump to judgment I can pause and take a step back instead of running with it. Our breath provides the moment to simply notice and validate the reality.  God does not see us as victims of life.  If we want to see ourselves that way and ultimately live our lives, a major step comes from validating what is.  There is plenty of time for judgment and action.  We must begin with being with it.

Life sometimes feels like a series of do-overs.  We like to think we are moving along a linear time line of events but it does not seem to be the case.  When we look at how the natural world operates there is very little that speaks the idea of a straight line trajectory. It is more cyclical like a clock, the seasons, and even the Earth and all the planets.  A cycle calls us to return over and over again to where we started.  Perhaps it is life’s way of allowing us to see our growth or demise depending on our perspective.  When I feel most stuck in life is when I perceive that I should be moving forward and it does not involve cycling back.  I think if I am returning to a point of origin I must not be getting something.  This harsh judgment does not allow for the beauty of the rhythm of life.  Just as I return to our dates each day and find God glad to greet me as though it has not been done before, I can learn to return to spaces and places in my heart and mind.  If I look at it from the perspective of what new understandings or capacities I have when I return, the returning takes on an entirely different experience. If I am not able to grow I will only see what I have seen before and it will feel like I am going in circles to nowhere. If I am willing to grow in love and light in the time of the cycle, the returning is as much a movement into something new as it is a reminder of how far I have come.