dailydatewithgod

Being a leader is a quality that is heralded all around.  We look to our leaders to help define who we are and show us what we are capable of.  At the end of the day, we are all leaders  in some way.  We lead our own lives, we lead with our thoughts and feelings, and we lead with what we choose to focus on. The reason we find it so easy to point at where others fall short in their leadership is because it is happening outside of us. We think we see it from an objective perspective.  What we fail to realize is the potential to fall is in all of us.  It is in all of us because it is part of the deal.  Life is not about a perfect ascent to more perfectness.  Life is about getting up and falling down and getting back up again.  It is why we lean in close when leaders admit their mistakes and demonstrate their ability to do it differently the second time around.  We recognize true leadership when we see it.  Simply leading does not require much. Inhabiting the qualities of leadership means being willing to grow and to communicate your growth so others may see themselves in it. The leaders we are impacted by are those who take risks and do not go into hiding when they mess up.  We can incorporate this humble quality of leadership by owing for ourselves and God when we fall short of our own ideals.  We do not necessarily need to share it with the world but if we run from it ourselves we are only following the lead of our shadow.  God encourages us to focus on growth and the power of love to transform all “mistakes” into messages of hope.

My prayer for us is the curiosity to explore the quality of leadership as a way to engage our hearts in an honest look at the areas of growth in our lives today.

Sometimes life is just hard.  There is an expression in 12 step language that is repeated a lot, “Simple, but not easy.”  That little statement has saved me more times than I can count.  When all things are working in accordance with how I think they should go it is easy. Allowing something to be simple is about being in accordance with God’s will.  I do not have to complicate things by taking the reigns.  I can slow down, pause, and ask God for help.  It is about trusting that what is accordance with God’s thinking is what works best.  Often I have to complicate things a little first before I am wiling to let go in accordance with peace.  I know that being in accordance with God’s perspective speaks to my heart when nothing else will.  It is the experience of knowing that something in the universe is interested in my care.  I do not have to jump through a bunch of hoops to experience what it means to be in accordance with the power of love, I just need to remember where that power lies within me.

Most people including myself do not revel in the idea of being in conflict.  Yet I find the phrase, what you resist persists very applicable to conflict.  The more I make a practice of pushing it  away or trying to avoid it, the more conflict I eventually find myself in. I am familiar with self-conflict.  I picked it up as a coping mechanism as a child when I needed a way to keep the peace of the people around me.  When our sense of safety is on the line, we will do whatever it takes to make sure we can create it.  If it is not there, we find a way to establish it.  Growing up was a very mixed experience as it is for most of us.  This meant modulating between times that felt okay and other times that were a complete lack of safety. Yet because of the dynamics present, it was clear to me that I could not rely consistently on the tools of my parents to provide the kind of safety that worked for me.  Yet, they did provide the safety of food, shelter, and emotional connection when it was there. I learned to be cautious when I was getting what I needed because it came at a cost.  I couldn’t fully allow myself to let go into it because I didn’t know when things would change.  So I learned when the conflict arose to do what I could to keep it from happening by compromising what I needed.  I disregarded my own thoughts and feelings and went along with theirs. After all, what were my options?  I do not blame my parents, they were doing the best they could because it was what they knew.  We cannot give of something we haven’t got.  I figured I could handle the conflict within me better than the potential bad outcome of conflict with others.  Yet,  I had my moments and my temper tantrums because after a while I could not even quiet the conflict inside myself.  What is important is what I do with it today.  Today I have learned because of my daily dates with God to sit in discomfort. This allows me to notice with less judgment when conflict arises around me and within me.  In the moment of breath when I pause I can choose how I want to react.  Next, I can question what is going on.  Is it truly a conflict or discomfort?  Do I need to take action with another person or just myself?  I can ask God how she sees the situation.  But if I run from the conflict or squash it down within me, I will not grow from it.  It is not an easy process to undo our patterns of long practiced behaviors, but with God anything is possible.

So often we think that the thoughts running through our heads are just information.  We tend to take them as truths, our truths.  As I have grown from my daily dates with God each morning I see the value of inquiry.  Each thought or feeling becomes an opportunity to investigate further, especially if it is something that keeps coming up for me.  It is like getting stuck in a turnstile.  Instead of just going round and round, I can ask for the courage to jump out when there is the slightest crack.  I can put my hand up and ask for help from outside the turnstile to keep it open long enough for me to get out of it.  Once I am out, I can choose to walk away or look back and notice what caused me to get stuck in the first place. It may bring up more questions.  Was it my fault I got stuck?  Was there something in the mechanism that caused it to  happen?  Was I supposed to spend some time looking at things at the entrance of the building from all angles?  Was it about me asking for help?  This may seem like overkill for getting stuck in a turnstile but if it is the 2nd, 3rd or 4th time it has happened, it might be time to inquire as to what the pattern is about.  I cannot approach this inquiry on my own because left to my own devices my mind will conjure up all the reasons why it is my fault and I should just never go through one again.  That may be the case but I need God to sit with me in the space of inquiry much like our daily meditation time and be open to what can be discovered with compassion.

When we find ourselves in circumstances that do not meet our expectations we react by feeling disappointed, hurt, angry, betrayed or any number of things.  A common quip is to say to ourselves, “just deal with it.”  In my mind that usually meant stop feeling what you are feeling and move on.  However, it is not as easy as it sounds.  Depending on how long we have nurtured those expectations the level of reaction is going to vary.  It is essential for our growth to not get stuck in what we wished would have happened.  Dealing with it is about seeing the reality of what happened as well as taking responsibility for our reaction.  If we make ourselves wrong for what we are feeling then we lose the lesson.  Our feelings are indications of how we are perceiving our world.  If we never stop to take a closer look, which is what dealing with it is about, we attempt to move forward without all the information.  We are more likely to set ourselves up to repeat the same pattern and find ourselves yet again disappointed. Dealing with it is not rehashing it over and over in our minds. Dealing with it is not pretending are reactions aren’t real.  Dealing with it is about taking ownership of our feelings and responses to circumstances in our lives.  Only when we take responsibility by paying attention to how we are responding do we have the power to choose other options.  If we deal with it by pushing it aside, making it wrong, or not allowing ourselves to explore what the experience might have to teach us, we short-circuit a chance to get to know ourselves and the depth of our human experience.  God invites us to be curious about our reactions, to feel the feelings we have been given, and get to know ourselves a little more.  Only by doing so will learn what opens our hearts and what closes it.  She is ready to walk with us in dealing with the reality of who we are despite our reactions.  But he cannot go with us down a path we are not even willing to look at because we are already over it.

From the black and white perspective on life there is a clear boundary between right and wrong.  This is helpful as a child when the groundwork is being laid to understand how to operate in the world.  The difficulty comes as we mature because we learn how much color and grey exist in the world.  It is harder to rely upon everything being simply good or bad for the very reason that it is a simplistic view of the universe.  The reality is there are so many variations of everything. As we grow up and learn to take full responsibility for our lives, the right versus wrong distinction is less helpful. We can all think of circumstances in which we did something that is technically bad but for what we believe to be a good reason.  In other words, it worked for us to do the wrong thing.  I know we don’t like admitting to such things but it doesn’t make it any less true.  How else can we explain “bad” behavior on the part of clearly rational and mature adults?  We are motivated by things we perceive as working for us.  By bringing God into the conversation about what we are doing that is working we have an opportunity to engage in clarity for ourselves.  Instead of keeping God out because we know we are being “bad” we can invite God in to help us take a look at how it is working for us.  Sometimes without a closer look we only see what it is doing for us without recognizing what it is doing to us.  God does not have the judgment we assign to him. She is interested in the clarity coming from an honest examination of the full spectrum of our experience.  With God’s help we can open up the conversation to determine if what is working for us is also working for the truth of who we are within ourselves.

It may sound strange but God does not just show up in our lives in one way.  Why would the creator of all things limit our experience of connecting to all that is in only one way? There is a variety of thoughts, feelings, experiences and opportunities in existence at any moment from God’s perspective. If we are willing to allow ourselves to be led by God and the way God sees things we can let go of the idea that it must happen in only the way we can imagine it. Why would we bother opening ourselves up to how God sees things if we already know what to do and how it will happen?  We would not. Besides, why would God with all the possibilities at his fingertips, limit herself to human ideas of what it means to show love? Sometimes the portal into a relationship with God is by being open to the variety present in nature.  There are many varieties of trees, flowers, cats, faces of people, and apples to name a few.  If we allow ourselves to observe the variety present all around us and begin to connect it to the creator of all those things we might just see how God would show up for us in a variety of ways.  This connection allows us to let go of our expectations of how God is supposed to show up (according to us) and allows for the beauty of the mystery of God in our lives.

Our bodies will mirror what is happening in our minds.  When I knew only that my body was my enemy and in my mind responsible for my  suffering I treated it horribly and it lived in pain.  When I started stretching my thinking and seeing things in a new way my body become more flexible and light. I engaged in stretching my mind because I had gotten into so much pain from the restriction of my own thinking, I was willing to do anything.  There are times when I stretch my thinking and I can literally feel an opening being created in my mind.  As a dancer stretching was a regular part of the deal but I hated it because it caused me to be present and feel my body.  As I got further along in my recovery my relationship to my body began to be restored.  Not just because I was walking around in a healthier body but because I had stretched past much of my default thinking about my body.  Slowly through stretching it became in my eyes a vessel for my soul and a vehicle through which to communicate beauty and grace to the world.  Now stretching my body physically feels good and I can be with it.

As children we have an insatiable level of curiosity about ourselves and the world around us.  As we learn and grow we seem to lose touch with that sense of wonder.  We exchange curiosity for a practical reality.  Who said one had to be substituted for the other?  God gives us the capacity to hold space for wonder and reality, for the reality of wonder and the wonder of reality. Just because there are things that make sense and those that do not, does not mean one ranks higher than another.  Ask any mother who watches their child on their bike with a sense of pride because it was the first time without the training wheels.  The child sees the wonder in themselves because of the ability to do something they have not yet done though we know it to be real because of all the adults riding on two-wheeled bikes already.  Wonder speaks the language of our hearts while reality speaks to our minds.  God invites us to bridge the lines of communication and allow them to influence each other.  It is completely real that one’s heart feels broken after a loved one dies and yet there wonder in not knowing how that will enfold.  We tend to think in black and white while God sees a multitude of colors and greys.  Giving ourselves permission to incorporate a little wonder into our reality opens the door to a multitude of possibilities we may not have considered because they lay outside the realm of reality as we know it.

You have probably heard the expression about giving credit where credit is due.  It is an expression used by many people over the years.  It speaks to the importance of acknowledging that we are not alone.  We do not get to where we are going without being impacted by others.  The longer you live and the more people with whom you interact it is harder to separate out an original idea or thought.  We are constantly growing and being shaped by others and our experiences.  When we attribute our growth to certain person or event we are acknowledging the role they or it played in forming our current ideas and beliefs. Attribution is a way of honoring the moments in which God showed up in the flesh and encouraged us to grow.  Even if they are the hard experiences and people by whom we have been impacted.  Growth does not often come from successes we achieve but from the adversity we work through successfully.  It is hard for our ego to attribute part  of our success to the people who resisted us or the experiences we thought would break us.  If we are honest with ourselves, we know in our hearts they played a role.  The attribution goes both ways.  If we want to attribute our success to what we have overcome, the fullness of love would invite us to attribute part of it to what showed up we could overcome it and be successful.  The humble beauty of living in God’s world from God’s view is the courage to acknowledge that everything along our path is part of the journey. Nothing happens by mistake.  Whatever aids our growth in love has attributed to our deeper and more loving heart.