dailydatewithgod

We seem to walk around worried or in fear about the future.  Does that even make sense?  How can we fear something that has not happened yet?  How can we possibly know what the future will look like and therefore have things to fear?  I once heard a spiritual teacher remark that he found great freedom in realizing that when he was experiencing anxiety he knew he was in the future.  He had left the present moment and attached himself to an idea about what was to come.  There is something about the present moment which grants us the freedom to just be free.  Most of our concern about the future comes from the past.  Keep in mind the moment a moment ends, it is no longer the present.  It is the past.  Just like you reading that last sentence or the word right before this one.  If we were to project our future from the present, we would have less with which to concern ourselves.  We could be free to be open to what would happen because in the present it is all we are doing.  God meets us in the present moment.  Now. Besides, if we are fully in the moment we are in we are not thinking or worrying about anything else.  It is the gift of the present to have a mind focused on what is right here, right now.  We are free to be. When I spend time with God on our daily prayer and meditation dates or find myself stopping to notice the beauty of nature, focus on my breath, or smile at someone, I am not focused on a time other than the present moment.

Love alive is enlightenment.  When we embody the love we are we live in a wakened state because the light inside of us is alive.  Have you ever tried to sleep in a brightly lit room?  Have you ever tried to hide in a wet lit space?  Not only can we not help but live waken in the light of love, but anything we deem as darkness gets dispelled when we bring it to the light.  Our eyes may need time to adjust and we can take as long as we like.  Our hearts overflowing with the love designed and created by God lives in this awakened light burning brightly in us.  We are invited to waken all areas of our life by using this light of love.  When we do not see how it could possibly tolerate the darkness we believe is buried deep within us, God encourages us to bring that thinking to him.  She does not wish to see us suffer in the dark and figure it out on our own. But God will not make us do anything. We are called to choose being wakened by the light of love buried and rooted even deeper in us than any darkness we perceive.  I know in some of my hardest moments when I have come face to face with my shame and hopelessness , the kind I was certain God would not nothing to do with, I had it completely wrong.  When I had the courage to bring it to the light barely flickering within me, I found God already there and wide awake. “Good, you’re here.  Now we can get to work and I can show you the gift wrapped up in what you call darkness.” God is awaiting our courage which is powered by the light of our wakened self.

We see things all the time but how often do we direct our looking?  If we choose not to choose what we want to see we are stuck looking at whatever pops up in front of us.  Our eyes are a funny thing.  We think it is our eyes that see, but when you break down the mechanics of how we register sight in our brain, it is not the direct of an input we imagine.  Our eyes are not cameras. This is why eyewitness testimony is often unreliable.  Often we see what we are looking for.  We have an idea in mind, perhaps formed from a first glimpse, and immediately our mind creates associations.  It develops a story before we have even taken in the full picture.  I sometimes wonder, what is God looking for in any given situation.  God always sees with love and therefore finds love in the looking. We can see the same love when we use the sight of our hearts.  I imagine the reason God sees love is because God is love and is looking to witness love.  If I am not looking for evidence of love in any given situation, I am liable to see whatever the most recent thing was dwelling in my brain.  My perspective and focus taint my vision for good or for worse.  God invites us to engage in the moment by looking for love.  When we struggle and fear we do not see it, we can ask God for help.

God does not see things as we see things.  God greets us with each new breath and offers the gift of his perspective if we are open to it.  She invites us to see things as the love we are instead of the fear will feel.  I did not know the what relief was until I learned the practice of turning to God both during our dates and at any point during the day and saying: “God, show me how to see this differently, ”  “God, I am willing to see this person, situation, experience differently, ” “God how do you see this. ” Or in my less finessed way, “Ugghh . . . God! What in the world?  Where are you in this?  I can’t see you. Help me to see.”  To be set free from my own perspective on what I am making something mean is priceless.  I am not always able to open my mind or my heart to see where love is and I struggle.  I am a driven woman and will keep at it.  However, when I have exhausted myself and come up with no alternative, I will pause and reach out to God to seek the relief only God can provide.  It usually comes with little or no effort, just a willingness to ask and receive   I am grateful for what I perceive as God’s patience with me, but well aware that I am the one who denies myself the relief until I choose otherwise.  God does not condemn me for the length of time I take.  She is happy to shed relief with the lightness of love’s being that he is whenever I am ready to receive.

We begin with a welcome.  It is what the world says to us when we arrive.  It is what we greet people who come to visit. It is how we respond when people express gratitude.  Being welcoming is about acknowledging the opportunities that each new moment possesses.  God welcomes us into the knowing of his existence starting with our breath. The breath we use to face each moment of our lives.  She further welcomes us to reacquaint ourselves with our heart.  Therein lies the creative design. By welcoming all circumstances in our lives and bringing them to our heart to discern how we can grow in love from them forms a welcoming life.  God does not promise a life free to experiences which we sometimes call challenges or bad things.  God welcomes us to get to know all experiences whether we label them good or bad as an opportunity to grow our hearts.

It is our true nature that shines light in the darkness.  Part of that nature is the darkness itself.  We would not know what the light is if we did not have the awareness of the darkness.  Living in a dualistic experience we are called to bring love to all sides of things and all elements of ourselves.  We will not live in wholeness, the realness of ourselves until we embrace all parts and acknowledge them as part of the whole.  I don’t know about you but I cannot relate to someone who has never made any mistakes.  So why do I feel driven to not make any myself or feel I need to hide things that are less than perfect in my eyes?  My eyes miss the beauty of things all the time.  Is it possible they miss the reality of the beauty of my life shone from the missteps or mistakes?  God invites us to see the real nature of ourselves as that which is a wholly accumulation of all our experiences.  If God can love all of us in all our realness unconditionally, who are we to choose not to?

When we live in agreement with our truest selves there is a peace we experience unlike any other.  This experience of concord with one’s heart is remarkable.  Before I began my daily dates with God I had a momentary sense of peace with myself from time to time but it was fleeting.  I did not know the power of living in concord with one’s heart because I was still running from it.  I thought somehow I could keep the deepest part of myself hidden out of fear of its darkness and still manage to be okay. Unfortunately I was doing a lousy job of it.  Day by day God showed me how to step into the deepest space of my heart, despite my fear and find the concord of love residing where I thought it would never be.  I had placed my ideas of safety and protection above who God is.  I thought my experiences taught me I had to figure it out on my own.  God has patiently shown me I can let go of my ideas of what safety is and embrace the concord of my heart I can be at peace with myself and life one day at a time.

My prayer for us is the willingness to let go of any conflict with have within ourselves and embrace the concord of love God designed in us today.

When we are drained of our own resources we find ourselves in a seemingly bad spot. Yet it can be the very moment from which great transformation can occur.  Empty and with nothing to bring to the table we are open to receiving what God has to give.  So often the problem is not that God does not want to give love and so much more to us, but we are full of so many other things, there is no room. I remember early on in my recovery when it dawned on me that I had been so busy filling myself with food to solve my problems, there was no room for God’s solutions.  Further along I acknowledged I had let my heart get filled with anger and grief and built a wall around it.  It was a childhood concoction of safety.  I did not leave any way for God to show me how to reconnect with what was truly there.  Our emptiness makes us willing to learn like a child learns.  There is no expectation, there is no previous knowledge with which to compare.  A child is simply willing to be filled up.  When we find ourselves in situations with adults we rely on, we allow ourselves to be filled up with whatever they have to offer.  Then we decided it must be what we deserve as did they.  God has a grander plan than that.  Maturing in my relationship with God has meant emptying myself of old and painful ideas of love and safety in exchange for what God has offered.  For me, it was not until my tank of what I knew ran empty that I was willing to let God truly fuel me with his love.

My prayer for us is the courage to allow ourselves to come to God from a place of emptiness and receive the love we are designed for today.

In certain Christian circles, we hear the term saved used.  It is often described like a once in a lifetime after which everything is wonderful.  Unfortunately, it is also something that has and can be used as an exclusionary factor.  Christians separate those who are saved versus those who are not.  As a Catholic Christian, it was not a term we used often.  I had a priest friend who would say we were salvaged.  I was raised to believe that while baptism was a cleansing of my spirit, it was more about a daily relationship with God.  I am not going to get into a religious debate about the pros and cons of different approaches to God.  I believe God meets each of us in a way we can understand on our own path.  As a child, I thought being saved meant being rescued from my circumstances.  The daily building of the relationship would somehow enable me to avoid certain circumstances and pain.  Today I recognize this as young thinking.  As I have grown and dealt with hardships in my life, I see how God has been present all along when I remembered to look for God.  Knowing God can save me from my thinking about a circumstance or person far outweighs the seeming relief of being rescued from a situation.  It is humbling to admit, but some of the worst experiences I have been through shaped me the most.  Only by facing the layers of messy perceptions about who I am as a woman and as a sexual woman who I came up with in order to survive the incest do I get to experience the power of forgiveness and self-compassion.  Only in desiring to forgive my father have I learned to experience true peace and grace that comes from the willingness to pray even absent of the belief of possibility of it doing anything.  It was only when I was about to flunk out of college that I saw my resiliency in walking through a time of loss in my life and still managed to show up and do what needed to be done.  When I remember to bring God into whatever it is I am facing, I know I stand a chance of walking through it in wholeness. God is the one who can save me from the dark and winding road of my thinking that cannot see the forest through the trees.  It is a daily practice and sometimes a moment to moment one.  God, show me how you see this.  God, help me to see this differently.  Two simple prayers which save me each time I use them.

Perception is a funny thing.  It can take something completely innocuous and turn it into a bad or good experience based on our perception.  Martin Luther King once said, “There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.” As I began my recovery journey many years ago I heard a similar idea expressed in 12 step literature and really connected with it.  It allowed me to have the experience of being and feeling both good and bad at the same time.  We experience things as we are in the moment.  If I am focused on what I am grateful for and aware of I perceive the situations in my life as blessings.  If I am focused on all that seems to be going wrong and all the bad that exists in the world, I perceive situations as being negative and want to get out of them.  Growing up I would try to focus on the positive side of things and got labeled as a Pollyanna.  At the time it was a product of not having a skill set on how to be with the negative.  In order to focus on the positive I would discount and push down the negative.  I thought it could only be one or the other.  God helps me be with all of whom I am and experiencing.  Being in the space of blessing makes room for what is authentically happening while simultaneously making room for God to be present.  Being from blessing is a belief that no matter what is going on, God is constant.    No amount of negative emotions or experiences removes the power of love’s presence.  We are blessed because God is alive in us, through us, and always with us.  No outside circumstance, no matter how daunting can change who and what God is.