dailydatewithgod

God has a subtle way of providing space that is unlike anything I seem to be capable of.  I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me given the way our bodies and nature move.  There is a flow.  In and out, up and down, back and forth.  Even how things move in circles creates a completeness and yet an opportunity to get to it even if you miss it the first time around.  The fact that we do not have to remind ourselves to breathe and our system functions gives me the sense we are constantly being guided and taken care of.  I am touched by the sacredness with which God sees creation.  Our life’s breath moves through us without our choice.  We are left to choose how we want to use our breaths.  We get to choose how it fuels our energy and takes us through this life. We get to choose whether we want it to help us speak with kindness or anger, exert ourselves physically or suspend it in a moment of awe.  God clearly wants creation to live and thrive.  We get to choose with each of those given breaths how we want to show up in the living and thriving.

Is a western civilization phenomenon that constantly asks if we are happy?  It seems to be predicated on the thought that if we have this thing or are with this person or have this title we will be happy.  What if our happiness is not found in anything outside of ourselves?  What if God has already equipped us with what we need to make us happy?  I think most people at some point or another have acquired that thing only to find out they are not as happy as they anticipated. Is it simply a disproportionate expectation or the placing of happiness outside of ourselves?  Is happiness a thought, a decision, an emotion or something more?  Maybe we have warped the word so much we have lost sense of its meaning.  Maybe if we halt from using the term and stop thinking about whether or not we are happy, we can experience it.  My sense of happiness is sometimes context dependent and largely influenced as all things are on my perspective.  If I am in a good place all kinds of things show up as happiness.  If I am having a rough day it is easy for me to miss out on things that typically show up as happiness for me.  I remember a time in my life, suffering from clinical depression when I felt like I was living in a cobweb and could not see my way out of it, let alone resonate with an idea of being happy. I was preoccupied with surviving and hoping it wouldn’t get any better.  It was a time when I would swear God stopped listening.  But it wasn’t so much a lack of happiness as a lack of being.  Through the various circumstances of my life I had suppressed so much feeling because it was too painful.  It wasn’t time for me to take a long hard look at my life and stop numbing out.  I believe God was there by my side, but like the illusory happiness, I could not see it with my eyes. It wasn’t until I reached the opportunity for recovery and halted the very behaviors I thought made me happy (the very ones keeping me numbed out), that I began to restore my sense of self.  It is often by halting one thing or even halting our thinking about it,  we open the door to experiencing the very thing we are looking for.  I believe God was backing me up and inching me towards a willingness to halt the very behavior that I thought made me feel some sense of happiness but no longer did.  I had become so numbed out I didn’t stop to question if it truly brought me happiness.  As I live my life hopefully more awake, I have the freedom to question what I think makes me happy and check in with my heart to see if it something worth halting today.

It is clear to me from my daily prayer and meditation dates with God, I see differently then my Creator.  I am given the precious opportunity to step inside a completely different world than the one residing in my head by giving presence to our relationship.  It started out as a necessity to move out of tremendous pain and suffering and day by day becomes the beckoning space of acceptance allowing me to show up authentically.  It is as though God has gently shown me the beauty of my own heart which had become a foreign entity to me.  All the layers, and I find new ones regularly, of seeming protection and defensiveness encased over my heart are and never were a deterrent to God. The surprising delight with which God faces me wholly is the most vulnerable and yet powerful feeling in the world.  There is no point in putting on a good face or pretending to be someone or something else.  God takes my hand over and over again, guides it to my heart, and reminds me the space I am looking for in any situation is my heart.  In my heart I have found resources to withstand any outside experience.  In my heart there is found a resource of God which encases a multitude of possibilities my mind cannot wrap its head around.  When I am frustrated and lost, God whispers in my ear to return to the place I am found. I am found in the realm where I matter simply because I exist.  I may not understand it but my heart beats at every moment with the wave of being found by the one who founded me and today I am grateful.

The various creations of love provided by God on any given day are enough to make your head spin.  There are moments when I am fully present to the synchronicity of God’s presence in my life and times when I am frustrated because I want and need God to be obvious.  It is silly of me to think I can be the true determinant based on my perception of whether or not love is present at any given moment.  I suppose this is what is meant by blessings in disguise.  The very thing I cannot imagine being the presence of love is.  I believe this stems from my thinking love is something I should know.  Certainly I would recognize it if it were here.  But if God is greater than anything I can imagine perhaps I am staring love in the face and thinking it is fear.  Maybe the very thing that seems like the opposite of love is what is causing me to reach for the hand of God in search of love is the love itself.  I will not pretend to know how God plans to bring me to a greater awareness of love in my life, all I can do is be open. If I truly believe God is love and God is everywhere, then love must be everywhere even if in disguise. Two simple prayers I have learned to crack open the willingness to see love I think is not there are: God change my thinking.  God open the eyes of my heart.