dailydatewithgod

Our minds have this incredible capability and desire to make meaning from everything.  It is what moves us to action in positive and negative ways.  The disciplined life is about reigning in our meanings and pausing before acting on them.  Questioning is a tool so we can begin to make sense of the meaning.  Each day on my date, I turn to God with my heart open as much as it is that morning and ask to be directed by God’s sense of things.  “God, is this how you see the events of my life?”  I want to touch the transcendent meanings of my self and my world.  I know from experience that within God’s sense of life is the power of love.  Within God’s sense of existence and purpose is the knowledge of the multitude of possibilities existing within each encounter and relationship.  Within God’s sense of the here and now is the reminder that love is all there is no matter what ever else is appearing in the moment.  My heart longs to be connected with this sense because no matter how profound or logical the meanings are that I come up with, they all fall short.  Only God’s sense contains the everlasting nature of peace.

Growing up I remember hearing the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves.”  While I am not entirely sure of the source of this expression, I have come to understand it as a way of saying that in order for God to help us we have to play a part.  God will not just swoop in and take over.  In a cooperative relationship with God, I invite God to intervene. I have lived long enough to recognize when I need to surrender. Sometimes I do so calmly, other times it is done in a frantic request. I can tell when I have no control over something and the only thing I can do is turn it over to God.  I have to let go of it to give it to God.  God will not yank it out of my hand.  Sometimes I have to turn it over and over again.  When it comes to relationships in life, I find I have to turn things over and then later on when I get hooked again, I turn it over again.  I am powerless over not being able to see love in a particular situation, so I turn that over.  I am powerless over being in fear about something in my life, so I turn that over.  My part of cooperating with God is in my willingness to hand it over. Sometimes when I turn it over, it comes back to me with new insight.  Other times the situation or person is no longer in my life.  When I get stuck in wanting to control a situation or a person’s reaction and thus modify my behavior and am not myself, it is because I fear that God will not be enough to get me through real or perceived loss.  The cooperation God asks is to trust God in any situation.  God desires for me to cooperate with him by knowing that the presence of love I experience in the depths of my heart during our dates or at other times, is more real than whatever I fear I losing.  Sometimes it takes me a while to be willing to cooperate with God’s perspective in a situation or relationship, but when I do I find the peace that no level of fear can supersede. It is a daily practice of cooperation that I practice on our dates each morning so I can bring the spirit which is the best version of myself into my day today.

The largest organ of the human body is our skin.  Its general design is of protection of the underlying structures and keep out bacteria that may be dangerous to us.  The sensory element of our skin is what allows us to feel hot, cold, and pain to name a few. When we connect our skin with another human beings it registers on that part of our body and in our brain.  If it is a safe and kind gesture it also registers in our hearts.  Our heart rates will actually slow down when we are in the presence and comforted by someone who cares. The value of being held is seen in a mother’s embrace of her baby, a parent’s gentle pat on the back and a good friends’ warm hug.  As an incest survivor I grew up with a very mixed experience of touch.  It was hard to know when a kind touch might become something else entirely.  Even when it didn’t I learned to be on guard.  As an adult I have had to be gentle with myself in recognizing that it takes me a while to feel comfortable to let people close enough and determine whether their touch is safe.  Strangely it has been a blessing that I am able to develop a strong relationship with God who does not have a literal physical presence.  In my daily prayer and meditation dates I can focus on being in touch with my own body and recognizing God’s presence in that.  As an obesity survivor, my recovery has taught me how to not treat my body as the villain I always blamed it for being. Within my heart is a desire to connect more and more with the power of touch as I release the old stories which still show up in my body.  I know God never designed the presence of touch to be used for unhealthy purposes.  We all experience wounds of different kinds and the more we recognize the intertwining natures we have as energetic beings, the more we can step into the full presence of God for ourselves and each other. With God’s encouragement we can let go of our old attachments to unhealthy or hurtful experiences of touch. No one can do it perfectly, but as my dates have taught me, if we are willing to be the vessel of love our touch will convey that message even in a handshake.

Love’s calling comes in the oddest forms sometimes.  It is one of the many gems in how God appears to operate at least in my life.  I used to think that only when pleasant or peaceful situations occurred was it a sign of God’s presence.  As I have matured in my relationship with God on our daily dates, I am continually reminded that there is nowhere God is not. Love’s presence is also in those irritating little blips and bubbles of life that percolate and sometimes pop right in front of my eyes.  When an uncomfortable feeling or idea is bubbling up inside of me it is my heart stirring that the presence of love is needed with greater strength.  When anxiety and fear take hold of my mind I seem to operate as though I am in a bubble that is growing ever thicker and stronger.  It is those moments that my heart calls out to my Creator.  Through my voice I find myself yearning to connect and be restored to wholeness of mind and body.  And because I can be impatient, I want it now and can be straight up demanding that God show up “right now!”  But God knows me in and out and I am certain gets quite a chuckle at how moved I am in the bubbling of my feelings.  In the right time, God’s, not mine, an intuition or sense of peace or changed perspective falls gently on my consciousness.  My part is to not let the bubbling get to boiling or freezing and spread to other realms of my life or the people around me.  In the quite space of waiting with the bubbling I am drawn from my heart to focus on God.  There I am given the chance to breathe in the trust of the inherent strength of love residing within me at all times. God provides the time for me to learn from the bubbling by first not making it wrong or bad.  God shows me on our dates that I can continue to show up in this bubbling space and not boil over or freeze up.

We are capable of so many things and experiences that we have no idea.  Right now in this moment so much information is coming at you in the form of various energies like light and sound.  Not to mention all the visuals you are processing from your optic nerve through your brain.  There is a reason that little babies need so much sleep.  That haven’t yet figured out how to sift through the information and experiences all around them.  Over time we build up files so to speak and automatically sift through the information without any conscious effort.  It is one of the brilliant elements of the human brain to be able to do so.  The down side is that we sometimes miss out on things.  Our brain will categorize something we see as already known unless we slow down and take a closer look. The moment there is an element of familiarity in an experience our brain brings to mind the familiar feelings and ideas that were attached to it from the past.  There is no way to tell our brain to stop sifting but we can set a conscious decision to look, listen or feel past the known.  We can opt to take a second look before we sift it out.  We can invite God into the sifting process by praying to see things differently.  Therein lies the opportunity to see multiple possibilities of love instead of what we readily discard as being the opposite.