dailydatewithgod

I am always amused that in the midst of living in a city of massive numbers of people I can feel disconnected from others.  Being surrounded by bodies means nothing if I am not able to relate.  Finding others with which to make genuine connection is part of what it means to be human.  As an introvert I know that I generate energy from my alone time and I cherish it a great deal, but nothing lights me up like being able to relate with someone even if it is just over an idea or an experience.  Some of our relations are life long, some are momentary, and most come and go.  I’ll never forget a wise woman while trying to console me after a break up told me “Everyone is in our lives for a reason, some for a season, and some for seasoning.”  Connecting with people brings a wholeness to our experience because we are engaged with the whole of ourselves.  We fall for the illusion that because we are in separate bodies that we are not related to each other.  Yet I have walked into many a room of strangers and became present to the energy of the room.  A room full of hundreds of separate bodies who all seemed to be connected somehow.  The relating began when we all set the intention to show up for the event.  The relating continued when we focused on our relatedness.  At a very biological level we do this when we mirror other’s facial expressions.  It is a built-in mechanism that we cannot help but do.  It allows us to know that we are in relationship.  God designed us to be able to relate to each other. Maybe the only reason we come in so many varied cultures, sizes, colors, and experience is so we can see the myriad of possibilities that exist in God’s eyes.

I am someone who for many years walked through life not in touch with all the energies and ideas within me that kept me from connecting to my true self.  Because of this I can acknowledge the power and value of awareness.  I used to think it was about being fully aware all the time.  I figured now that I had woken up and was no longer on the path of just plodding away at life, I was not going to let anything go uncovered.  Then, I woke up to reality that living a spiritual life means a willingness to be aware and trusting in God’s timing.  I cannot fight to make it happen.  I cannot push myself into being open to an awareness of myself or others.  Most importantly I realize that it is not a failure on my part if I am unaware.  God is in charge.  I trust that His whispers of insight will come to me when I am willing to hear them with love.  As we reflect on the closing of a year, I am grateful for the things that I was made aware of that I had not seen before and I hold with anticipation at what might come into my awareness with this next year.  The difference I know in my heart that comes from my dating God is I am not afraid of what will become present to me.  I know whatever I am meant to face, God has got my back and is invested in the awareness ultimately being an opportunity to be more fully the love from which I was created.

In the third of the 12 steps as designed by Alcoholics Anonymous it says, “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives to the care of God as we understood Him.”  Many spiritual practices speak of the turning over of one’s will to that of a power greater than themselves.  In AA they present the idea in the previous step that you can create your own understanding of this Higher Power.  To me more than anything is in the acknowledgment that it must be a power that I believe cares for me.  Otherwise, why would I be willing to turn my will and my life over to it?  The formulation of this Higher Power is therefore influenced by what I see as care.  It actually took me several years into recovery before I saw the word “care” in the step.  I now realize it allows me to more readily recognize when I have given power over to something that does not care for me.  That could be a person and his or her ideas, an experience, a story in my head, an expectation, a job, a possession, or my own negative thinking.  When those entities are not caring for me, they are clearly not my Higher Power.  I can then take a step back and reevaluate what I am turning my will and my life over to in that moment. Being still, as I learned to do in my daily prayer and meditation date with God, tune’s my ears and my heart to the still small quiet voice of God which cares for me.