dailydatewithgod

I am not sure if it comes from watching too much television as a kid or just wanting so much to not be where I was but somehow I entered adulthood with this distinction that tells me there is a problem if I don’t get the happy ending or the things are not tidy by the end.  Maybe it is part of the human condition.  I always thought it was my job to do things or behave in such a way that nothing bad could ever come from my actions.  I suppose it is a level of perfectionism but more than that it is a faulty idea that what is, is not what it is supposed to be. It was imparted to me by parents and teachers that learning was good and growth was good, but I missed the lesson on how to withstand trials.  When those processes of growth occurred, I learned to find fault with them. I figured I must have done something wrong to bring them on.  I must have deserved the challenge or trial.  The funny part is that it didn’t work the other way. When things came easy and worked out, I wasn’t allowed to take credit for having done things right.  It just happened or I got lucky.  Talk about a raw deal!  Mind you most of this was just the examination in my head.  There were certainly people in my life who acknowledged me and said thank you when I made a contribution, but I wasn’t able to internalize it.  I thought it would be immodest. Not being able to receive has been a huge learning curve in my life.  I am certain I am not the only person who has ever felt this way, but it is one of those thing that people don’t talk about.  As if to do so would mean that one was too stupid to have figured out that it is wacky thinking.  My date time with God has provided me with an invaluable experience of the power of showing up no matter what.  I am present every morning, whether I want to be or not.  I show up even if I don’t feel like it.  My head doesn’t stop the thoughts even once the entire meditation time but I sit there. Other times I feel angry, frustrated, ungrateful, but I present myself as is to God.  Then there are the times when I fall asleep.  However, every time I come out of our date with a sense that God appreciates my presence and sees it as valuable. In the consistency the fruits of love have grown.  Love for God, love for myself, love for others, love for nature, love of the process of life and yes, love of the imperfections of myself and others, and the day I am in.

God awakens the light of love in our hearts every time we turn to him to seek guidance.  We forget over and over that this light lives within us at all times.  It is ready for the enlightening of our lives and more importantly the thinking on our lives but we need reminders of its presence.  Sometimes these reminders come as trials, sometimes as enlightening experiences. I notice that when it comes through an enlightening experience my first thought is that of God.  When it comes through a trial my first thought is what I may have done wrong.  It is only recently that I have begun to digest the idea that it is the process the experience brings me to, not what gets my attention.  In other words, I do not need to waste time condemning myself for how my mind is being opened, but seize the opportunity to process into a reunion of the light of my heart.  Yet again a reminder that I am called to live humbly (be teachable) in a universe built around a curriculum of love.

Have you ever noticed that beauty draws you in quietly?  It stops you in your tracks and calls you to draw close.  Being a witness to beauty does not require hard action. It asks for quiet contemplation.  When something or someone strikes as beautiful we find ourselves mesmerized and wanting to be nearer.  No words are necessary and often we can’t find the right ones to describe what we are experiencing.  Our breath is suspended and time seems to stand still.  God sees all of creation as beautiful.  When I spend time on my date I am reminded of times in my day when I was a witness to beauty.  Then God reminds me that I am included in that beauty.  Now for a gal who grew up hearing the back-handed fat girl compliment , “You have such a beautiful face, if only . . . ” that was a little hard of an idea to accept at first.  Then I remember that all of nature has such grand beauty. I can see it in sunsets, flowers, little children, laughter, people embracing, fresh smelling roses, and the feel of rain drops on my face.  If God created all of those things and me, why wouldn’t I be included in that beauty?  God sees my heart and calls it beautiful because God knows the design and the depth of love that resides in it and has never faded no matter what I have done or not done.  If I am going to claim myself as a believer in God and acknowledge that God sees different from me, recognizing beauty in myself is a good place to start.  At the beginning of my day when our date starts God greets me with eyes of beauty and invites me to embrace it as the lens through which I see my day.  It is up to me to accept the invitation.  Today I will, will you?

Each day is a completely unknown beginning from which to conduct our lives.  We recognize that this moment has never happened before and never will again.  From this space of unknowing we have unlimited possibilities to embark upon.  So many different things and experiences can emerge.  Love can show up in a million different ways. Each new breath gives us this opportunity.  In theory this sounds wonderful.  But what if not knowing what was going to happen next was a scary thing? What if growing up one of the possibilities was danger, pain, or confusion? What if knowing that the danger, pain or confusion was less likely to happen because I kept on the lookout or behaved in a certain manner? As a kid I would give my life for that sense of certainty. To heck with limitless possibilities for good.  Knowing that it would not happen was my freedom.  Or so I thought.  The difficulty was that I used that same philosophy to apply to every part of my life, not just what happened at night at home.  I adopted the philosophy that I should know things even if it didn’t make logical sense.  The unknown meant danger, pain or confusion and I had already had enough of that.  Fast forward to living life in a world of mostly unknowns, trying to control and know things before I possibly could.  I would judge myself based on these unrealistic expectations and make myself wrong for not knowing in any area of life.  It is called living life in a box.  The paradox in my life was that I created this protective layer of weight around me to live inside a small life.  When I got into recovery I began to realize that shedding the seeming layers of protection also meant taking God’s hand and stepping outside the box even for just a little at a time.  You see the box had been around my heart, not my body.  As I have grown and learned about living life on life’s terms without hurting myself and making myself wrong I get to be okay with the unknown. I don’t always like it but I accept it and can distinguish it from my previous experience. It is a day at a time process but one that is so much more rewarding. Today when I start my day on my date with God I place in his hands all that is before me that is unknown and ask for the courage to be present  to the possibilities of love.

Martin Luther King said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” It sounds a little like something out of an Indiana Jones movies where the next step will appear after you take the first but that is exactly what faith is.  It is calling upon us to be present in the moment.  When we see the whole staircase we casually figure we got it.  We think we know exactly where the next step is and take for granted that it will be there.  Seeing only one step means that we need to be in that one step and take it with hope that there will be another one when we take that one.  God is calling us to be present in the moment.  God is in the moment and he/she/it wants us there too, as fully there as we can be. I think of it like my drive to work in the morning.  I know which roads to take, but what if I had to take one on ramp in order for the freeway to appear?  You better believe I would be praying the whole time on that ramp that the freeway would be there at the end of the it.  I wouldn’t be thinking about the emails waiting for me when I get into the office or the classes I would be training that day.  My eyes would be on the road and my mind would be focused on staying connected to God. Hmm, what if I approached everything in my day that way?

The simplest and easiest way to be in life is the truth of who we are.  At any given moment we have a choice.  We chose whether we want to be of ourselves or someone else.  It is so subtle of a decision sometimes that it is not until we find ourselves exhausted and frustrated, blaming others for how we feel, and wanting to shut down and escape that we notice we have decided to go against ourselves.  When we expend energy being something other than our own truth it takes more out of us because we are not going with the flow of who we are.  It took me a long time to understand this.  I spent a lot of my life trying to be who I thought other people wanted me to be.  I was sure that if I just did the right thing and behaved in the expected manner that I would win the approval I so craved and I wouldn’t get hurt again.  That isn’t what happened and I almost killed myself in the process.  Today my challenge is owning the truth of who I am in the moment and responding from that place.  It is not always easy because it is less familiar but I don’t find myself as frustrated, blaming others, or wanting to shut down and escape.

We all came in to this world whole and complete in spirit.  There is no element of us that is broken.  Even if our physical bodies had ailments had the appearance of brokenness it was not the totality of who we are.  Our bodies are never the totality of who we are.  The measurement of our lives is not in the shape of our thighs or the number in our bank account.  It is in the opportunity to be present to what is happening right now. Being present to the people, listening to the sounds in the room, breathing in the air, and feeling the cleansing effect of the tears that are running down my face.

We live in this remarkable world where we are surrounded by sounds and sights.  There is never an absence of things to do or plan or be involved in.  There is so much that sometimes I feel a pressure to do as much as I can.  I don’t want to miss out.  Do you?  Of course not.  Why is it then that my greatest and most delightful time of the day is in the stillness of my date with God each morning?  Being a part of this daily ritual with God has brought me to some insight on this question.  Paradoxically the still and quiet time I spend with my Creator each morning, heightens my experience of all the sights and sounds that abound. The stillness creates a pungent experience of things that I am thinking about and doing.  It is as though practicing the opposite has created a heightened sensory perception.  There is probably some neuropathway in my brain that has expanded.  Maybe it is being able to be fully present in the moment that creates this experience.  Somehow practice in the stillness every morning makes colors brighter, people more animated, sounds more joyous, feelings more deeply felt, and smells and tastes more luxurious.  At this point I could care less why and prefer to simply enjoy it.  All I can say is Thank you and I’ll take more of that.

Better, greater, faster, smarter, shinier, and deeper.  What is it about adding “er” to the end of a word?  Is there a reason we need to compare one thing to another?  What if we the world was not a competition?  What if our being was the greater?  What if we already had the win in the bag? God doesn’t give us life and then ask us to prove why we should get another breath.  God doesn’t design us and then place us in some sort of video game where the only the fastest and smartest win.  Why do we do that ourselves and those around us?  Reality is that we already are.  There is nothing to prove. It would be like trying to prove to God that it was a good idea to do the creation thing.  We were created out of love.  Love encompasses all the erness needed.  Maybe it is discovering why God thinks the world needs our erness.  What if instead of trying to find out and prove our existence to ourselves and each other we opted to ask the one who created us?  What if we got quiet enough to hear the answer?

What do you suppose it is that motivates one to be good?  Is it something inherent in us or a motivation from outside of us?  As children of a God who is good, I believe it is inherent in us.  But because we forget who we are so often we need reminders and sign posts to lead us back to the truth of who we are.  Our experiences cannot change who we are fundamentally.  In order for that to be true we would have to believe in a God that can be undone.  The All Powerful would become the Mostly Powerful.  We cannot go back into the childhood of our biological lives but we can always return to the innocence of our hearts. God always sees us with the same essence from which we were created–goodness.  God does not fall for the same illusions that we do.  Badness and indifference do not undo goodness, they are simply paths back to goodness.  God knew what he/she/it was doing when we were created.  It’s not like we came up with an alternative way of existing after the one who is all designed all.  We get to choose if the path we are following aligns itself with the truest part of our hearts or not. If we are even asking the question we have a clue as to what the answer might be.