dailydatewithgod

In the small spaces of our lives when no one is watching we find ourselves in a moment of choice.  We can do what we think we are expected to do or we can do what our hearts want us to do.  In some cases they may be the same thing but at the end of the day we are beholden to our hearts not expectations. My daily dates with God have brought a clarity to my life that I did not expect. To be honest, I did not realize how muddy my thinking was when I started.  I just figured life was overwhelming and some how I would muddle through.  I would follow along doing what was expected of me and since everyone else seemed to be pleased, I would be too, eventually.  Yet, I was trying to blot out my life by numbing myself with food and self-hatred so something did not line up with my being. I built up a wall around my heart so thick I could barely access it.  When God invited me to look into what I had created and decide as an adult if it was still working for me, the process of clarity began.  Now I notice when my thinking steps me back into murky waters and I am invited by God to take a breath and reach out my hand.  Some days it takes me longer than others but God does not judge the length of time.  The moment I wake up to see what I am thinking and doing,  the clarity begins.

God is the deepest understanding in our minds.  When we wed ourselves only to the physical reality of this world we forget the essence from which we were created.  When we attach ourselves to a physical manifestation of God whether in a spiritual person or nature we step closer to memory housed within us of a connection to something greater than ourselves.  They become a portal into a memory of God.  Growing past that limited physical connection however is what causes our faith to grow and mature. If our experience of God is cultivated, it will expand beyond the form.  Thrown in the mix of all of this is particular institutions connected to certain spiritual figures.  Sometimes they can distort the message to meet their purposes only.  This can sometimes cause us to not want to remember our connection to a spiritual being because we associate it as only the form which is presented and accepted by a large group of people.  But our memory of God is not limited to the form which we or others believe  to be an acceptable version of God.  Through our daily dates I have been opened to experiences of God that defy standard acceptable presentations of God.  This causes my memory of God’s presence in my life throughout my life to be opened.  The times when I thought God was nowhere to be found, I see instead that what I believed was the only form of God was not there.  God is always there, but my eyes needed adjustment.  Reclaiming the memory of God restores my relationship with God and myself.

One of the definitions of healing refers to the idea of becoming sound again.  As though when we are healed we fall back int the rhythm of life.  What a beautiful picture.  When we are out of tune with life we are ill at ease.  We are in a wounded state and cannot hear the call of love.  God offers healing because God knows we are at our best when we are in sync with the vibration of light and love which is health.  Given how unhealthy we can potentially be, is it any wonder that we struggle with the mindset and heart space to handle the basic ups and downs of life?  We look to be restored to the soundness of life by finding something outside ourselves.  When we are on our own trying to connect to what is ailing us we are greeted by a cacophony of sounds very few of which resonate with our deepest selves.  Despite the alluring promises, however, the answers will not come from outside of us.  When we take the time to spend with God and have the chance to fine tune our hearts we can be healed.  Sound is a vibrational experience involving energies unseen.  This means healing is a process that can be somewhat mysterious.  There are the moments when we are healed by changing our behavior but if our mind is out of sync with our heart it is only a matter of time before the body begins to resonate the discord.  Inviting God into the spaces where we feel out of tune, even the ones we are ashamed of, allows the light of love to enter in and shift our resonance to health.  The gift of healing is one God is read to dispense upon invitation.  God desires to be in full resonance with us as much as possible and openness to healing is the first step.

The magnificence of God is such that our minds can barely comprehend it. Choosing a relationship with God means being open to the mysteries of being in relationship with the ebb and flow of life.  As we walk daily with God, we can experience the joy and the surprise of what it means to witness and partake in the surrounding nature of love.  God does not just create us to live life like a prescriptive measure.  God desires for us to be engulfed in the passion of living.  When we are surrounded by the mysterious and sometimes misunderstood presence of love we have no words.  We find ourselves devoid of thought and we lose a sense of time and space.  This experience gives us an inclination into the reality of God.  We are not able to surround ourselves this way so to experience it we must abandon ourselves to the surrounding God provides.  We have all had moments of brief flashes of this before but often do not know how to describe it.  We say it is mysterious, bizarre, weird, or other-worldly.  Rarely do we use the word love to express what is happening.  Yet love is exactly what it is.  Through the surrounding of God we are completely enveloped in the nature of our core reality and time and space have no hold on us.  We cannot think our way out of it.  We can only breathe it in.

As we wake up to the love God has for us we realize it is not God’s disengagement from which we have been suffering.  God wants nothing more than for us to claim the power of our hearts.  God placed within us the deep and profound capability to be a force for love in the world.  Yet if we go about our day without a sense of what we have to give, how can we share it?  If we do not claim the gift God has given us how will we know we have it to give to others?  In my daily prayer and meditation date with God, he shows me he is willing to be with me even in times when I do not want to be with me.  She stands firm in her view of my innocence and purity when all I feel is dark and angry.  God has already claimed us as the ones to play the role of living and growing in love with one another.  How long will we go without claiming it?  I was always grateful that unlike many people I saw wreaking havoc on the world, I did not suffer from being boastful or prideful about myself.  When I got into recovery I realized that suffering from low self-esteem and non stop self-criticism was the flip side of the same coin. Reverse pride is as much disconnected from God as self-righteousness or grandiosity.  It is not claiming who I truly am which is an extension of God, not for my own purposes but as a part of the greater story of love.  Stepping into claiming who we really are takes us out of feeling like we are less or more than others.  Claiming who we are allows us to be one with others.  We are all children of God.  Both the people we love and the people we cannot stand are children of God.  How close we want to be to others is directly proportional to their willingness to claim who they truly are. The same can be said for us.  In the meantime, God’s perspective will not waver.  Nothing we can think about ourselves or others ever changes God’s reality.

As someone with a good memory I pride myself on being able to remember things that other people tend to forget.  Conversely, I am very hard on myself and think something is wrong if I do not remember something. As I have matured I have learned to let go more and not be so hard on myself, thank God.  The longer I live there is more information in my brain and sometimes it reaches capacity when I least want it to.  I have also learned that in the grand scheme of things, I can trust that what I need to remember I will.  The downside of a strong memory is I can also remember things I would rather forget.  Mostly I want to forget the shameful, embarrassing  or traumatic events and experiences.  With God’s help I have learned to flip my relationship with my remembering.  The grace of being able to remember what I learn from an experience and forgetting the nitty-gritty details or feelings leaves space for a willingness to grow.  I heard recently someone say that they gave a graduation speech and said they hoped the new graduates would fail as much as possible.  I almost gasped and thought about my relationship to failure.  I always saw forgetting as a failure.  It is amazing the connections and meanings we put on things.  I internalized the idea growing up that if I failed it meant I was a failure and I would fall out of favor with others.  Who wants that?  In my daily relationship with God I see that sometimes the most powerful thing I can do is forget the meanings I create.  Things happen.  Life is awkward and uncomfortable.  We make mistakes so we can have something from which to grow. Forgetting my relationship to remembering allows me the opportunity to not have the right answer or be in control.  Ah . . . the freedom to just be. . . .How many more meanings might it serve me to forget?  Growing in the image and likeness of God is not about being perfect.  It is about embracing all the elements of ourselves and allowing God to use them to create love. What one person sees as failure, God sees as a perfect opportunity.

We all have gifts given to us to be shared.  They come in multiple forms from momentary to a life-long process.  We all know what it is like to be touched by someone else’s gift.  It could be their smile, musical talent, attention, money, curiosity, athletic ability, or kind ear.  We are often led to think we have nothing of significance to offer unless its elaborate, grand, or can change the lives of many people.  Yet how important is the offering of a guiding hand to someone who is blind?  How valuable is the offering of a smile to someone who is having a bad day?  How much impact is felt in the offering of music to the heart of someone who feels numb?  As a child I loved the story of the little drummer boy.  The only thing he had to offer was the playing of his drum.  He did not have the elaborate gifts of the kings, but his gift played with all his effort brought a smile to the mother of the newborn king.  When we connect with what our hearts have to offer throughout our lives or even just in this day, we can bring joy, peace, and the presence of love to any situation.

We get to choose the people and ideas that we keep close to our hearts. As adults we have a say that I we did not have as children.  We have voices to express opinions and share ideas.  As children we often do not have a say in who or what we allow close to ourselves.  There are expectations, even as adults, which cause us to be at war with what resonates with us. God does not desire our hearts to be a stomping ground for everything.  What we allow near to our hearts, if it is to live within us, must move with the same rhythm.  In my past when I have allowed things and people near to my heart that did not resonate with me, I chose to shut down my heart in order to make it happen.  There are a million reasons why and they are not important.  The important thing is seeing I was the one to suffer by allowing the nearness to my heart.  Shutting down was effective to numb me out but it cut off the access I had to my own heart.  It caused me to put casings and guards around my heart.  On the outside it looked loving and wonderful.  Inside my heart longed to be free.  After a time, it all broke down and while that was painful, it was the best thing for me.  It caused me to reevaluate what I allow near to my heart.  The actions, ideas, experiences, and people I bring near to my heart now go through me and God.  Each time I ask God, Is this person, idea, or experience something that resonates with my heart? Will cause me to grow in love and give love more fully to the world?  There is no formula, there is no system.   It is a day-to-day walk in the moments of the breath.

My prayer for us is the courage to pause in the moments of our breath and check in with our own hearts and God and ask if what is nearest to our hearts is resonating on the frequency of love today.

This time of year is fondly referred to as the season of giving.  It is a mixed bag of rushing to the stores or on-line to find that great gift for your loved one or coworker that tells them you are thinking of them with love this time of year and sharing the wealth through donations or service to charities. Children wait in expectation to see if Santa will fulfill their wishes and give them what they want, we fret over find that perfect gift to give, and people wondering where their next meal is coming from are treated to a full Christmas experience of gifts and a holiday meal.  These are all wonderful aspects of giving.  Giving is just one part of the process.  This is also a season of receiving.  When we open our hearts and our hands to give, we make room to receive.  We sometimes hear the message that giving is more important than receiving.  I think God is trying to tell us that giving is part of receiving.  One cannot happen without the other.  If we are holding on to something in our hands we cannot take on anything else.  If we give and don’t receive back then we do not allow the other person the opportunity to give.  The key here is the freedom of spirit in which it is done.  Giving out of obligation or expectation means our hearts are still closed to the process and purpose of giving which is love not obligation.  Sometimes it is hard to separate all these ideas.  God encourages us to go into our hearts and connect with how we can give love.  It may be through a gift, a smile, letting go of an idea that blocks us from growing, or receiving from someone else.  It is all an opportunity to give love. Openness to the freedom of the form and our mindset in the moment in which it is happening allows us to be about giving as God gives.

I am not sure if you can relate but it is sometimes hard for me to slow down.  I mean literally.  I will catch myself walking down the hall at work in a hurried fashion for no reason at all. Yet when I do I am able to breath better through my steps.  I think my body actually enjoys it more. But life is one thing after the next and there is not much time to even slow down let alone rest.  I love naps but I do not live in a culture that values rest.  Perhaps it is the consumerism.  Perhaps it is the fear of missing out.  Perhaps it is interest in so many things and so many people. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.  Perhaps it matters little why rest is not valued.  I don’t think God calls on us to evaluate the reasons for why we do what we do as much as the ability to choose if what we do resonates with our inner core and allows us to grow in love.  When you look at Hebrew story of creation, there is this remarkable thing that God does after creating like crazy for six days.  God rests.  It made me wonder when I read it.  Why would God need to rest?  I mean, God is all-powerful and created the concept of rest, but why is God taking the time to rest?  Perhaps (there I go again) God was attempting to model something for us.  We can grow, change, create, start new, destroy, transition and keep going, or we can stop along the way and rest.  God invites us into times of rest maybe not on a set schedule but the mechanism appears to be built-in.  We can go and push ourselves to the brink of death if we want but unless we take some time to stop and let it sink in, what’s the point? If we never have time to rest and enjoy our creations just as God did, did they really serve a purpose in our growth.   Rest allows for breath.  God invites us to not just do, but live.  Living involves time for everything.  I am not the moral failure my mind tells me I am being because I choose to rest and breathe it in.   Sometimes the simplest prayer I can say is “God, help me to remember I am a human being, not a human doing.“