dailydatewithgod

I remember so clearly in my mind as a kid when I would get out of the bathtub and my mom would wrap me up tightly in a towel.  She would rub my shoulders to help me dry off my body keeping as much warmth from the bath with me before I went to put on my PJs. I would make noises as she put the towel over my head to dry my hair. We would usually end up laughing and it was the felt sense of being wrapped in joy, silliness, and love. Being wrapped in this way is a constant for God when it comes to how God relates to us. On my daily dates as I began to open myself up to being present with God, I had a familiar sense of such a wrapping around my heart.  Up to that point, I thought the way to keep myself safe was to put an iron chain around it and board up walls around it to keep it from getting hurt.  Slowly God showed me that each of our hearts exists within this wrap of never breaking courage and love.  As we learn to live and breath connected to this heart sense, the more the wrap flexes to make room for more growth.  The feeling of our hearts breaking is merely the adjustment of the wrap to a newer reality of what it means to love.   The wrap allows for the flexing and while it seems in our minds that our hearts break, the only breaking we are really experiencing is the dismantling of whatever uninhabitable barriers we have placed on our hearts.  The wrap of God leaves room for us to grow and expand our hearts to experience the fullness of love.

When we are so busy moving and going, it is hard to know what is motivating what.  God invites us to pause and pay attention to what portion of ourselves is showing up for our lives at any given moment. I do not believe there is some perfectly balanced human being who is equally all portions of body, mind, heart, and soul all the time.  It is more like dancing and weaving through life attempting to bring the right portion of heart and mind to a decision. It is remembering to bring a portion of the soul when seeing the face of someone we cannot stand.  It is adding a portion of logic when we are emotionally overwrought. It is adding a dabbed portion of the body when we feel stuck in our heads.  The elements of ourselves are involved at all times.  The energetic layer which portions out what is driving our thoughts, feelings, actions, and habits tells us something about the efficacy of our lives. If we want to make some changes maybe it is less about being someone else or doing something drastic and more about changing which portions are present.  The power of the pause God taught me on our dates gives me room to notice what portion of myself is most present and available in the moment I am in.  From there I can choose to respond.

Given we all were created in harmony with nature is it really a surprise that we ebb and flow as all of life does?  There seems to be some sort of unwritten rule that as human beings were are fixed or need to be fixed because we are broken.  Perhaps what looks like broken is merely on the path to wholeness.  We view everyone through the lens of our own experience and reality.  Yet those we are viewing do not have the same exact experience or reality or vice versa.  So how is it possible to make any kind of accurate classification as to another person’s broken nature.  And what does broken even mean?  A broken bone heals over time.  A broken relationship either mends and returns the people involved with each other to a union or makes room for other relationships.  A flower that has a petal that has broken off is sharing its beauty outside the reach of its form and blesses that which it lands on.  God encourages us to see what looks to our eyes as broken as simply a move in a different direction.  Our hearts open us to see brokenness in and of ourselves and others as part of the process.  The sight of our eyes extends beyond the vision seen with our eyes and we are invited to look in an unknown direction when we encounter brokenness.

The journey of life seems to be one of learning and growth. We all know the destination and on some level, it appears futile to grow since, in the end, we can’t bring anything with us. From a pragmatic perspective, one wonders what the point is.  Why bother growing if all that is going to happen is it is going to come to an end?  Why bother expanding our realm of perspective or learning from the situations we find ourselves in?  As far as I can tell aside from an inner drive to grow and learn, it is about having the opportunity to make the most of life.  Before I got into recovery I spent so much energy trying to control my life and keep myself safe.  It was an overreaction to the chaos I was exposed to and unbelievably unsafe circumstances.  We all have the bubble or reality which bursts the realm of understanding with which we come into the world. Some bursts are bigger than others but we all have them.  They could be seen as cruel.  They could be seen as not needing to be bursts at all.  Why not just a little prick or pop? Then again, maybe it was a prick or pop but it felt like a burst. I think of the bubbles we used to blow from bottles of soap when we were kids. The bubbles burst seemingly so easy after such steady breath to make it as big as possible.  However we experience this awakening to the realm we have constructed, the burst becomes the element that wakes up our heart.  It awakens the heart, perhaps closed off due to protective thinking and behaving.  The awakening then calls upon us to give the heart equal resonance and power in our lives as the minds which created the realm of understanding we have. The breath has been steadily calling on us to pay closer attention to our hearts but our minds did not leave room in their realm except perhaps for functional purposes.  The burst begins to feel more like a steady heartbeat as we allow the realm of power to flow equally between our hearts and minds.  It is in the space of communication that the spirit of life dwells and connects our realm to those of others.

I am not sure why listening to or watching people do impressions of others is so funny and fascinating.  Some comedians make a living from it. I believe on some level we all take ourselves way too seriously so it is a relief to see someone act like someone else knowing it is not them. They are freer in some way to go with the impression they have of another person.  It is not as easy to swallow when you watch someone do an impression of you, at least it wasn’t the first time I saw it done.  However, with a little bit of time, I became fascinated by it.  We do not often realize the impression we give off.  Of course, the person who is impersonating does so through their own particular lens so it can vary from person to person.  One of the times I saw a student of mine do an impression of me in front of a group and started to feel angry but after a couple of deep breaths, I started to laugh.  It was done as part of an 8th-grade sketch on all the teachers and she did such a good job.  The impression of course was comprised of things you do not think kids notice and was exaggerated but she did a good job!  It gave me a reason to not take myself so seriously and worry about what impression I was leaving. The fact that she did the impression and was not overly worried that I would be angry with her and hold it against her says more about the internal impression I had left on her.  She was a student I had in class and worked within the student government.  Whatever elements of my behavior that translated into funny musings might stick in the minds of my students but the fact that they took a chance that I would laugh along with them meant they saw in me a playfulness that I did not know I impressed upon them.  While I am probably reading too much into it, I find myself wondering in our day to day lives how much of the impression we leave with others is felt and how much of it seen.  God invites us to recognize the impression on our own hearts of ourselves and how we bring that to every encounter with others.  It is my hope that I seek to be impressed by the presence of the hearts of others along with whatever comes across.

There are so many categories and labels that are both consistent and varied it may be hard to keep track.  It all boils down to which ones we need to know. It helps us to be able to categorize and place value otherwise we would simply be overwhelmed by all the information we are receiving. Therefore the ability to judge is a good thing and a very human thing.  But like all things good there is a flip side.  Most people who are attempting to better themselves or be more spiritual would say they are seeking to be nonjudgmental. I am not sure this is possible.  It seems to be part of the mechanism of what it means to be a living human being.  Judgment is simply a label that we use perhaps incorrectly to mean things like excluding, hold against, make wrong, and so on.  The ability to judge something is inherent, it is what we do with the judgment that matters.  All kinds of things go through our minds, but it is what we take into action that is evidence of who we are being.   I can have a tremendous judgment about how someone is dressed or an idea that he or she expressed.  It may even ascertain that my thinking or dressing is better or worse than the other person’s.  None of these judgments matter unless I treat the people differently as a result of it. God invites us to join the power of our hearts with our minds’ ability to judge so we do not allow them to fall into the good or bad bin and dictate our behavior from the space of lack of perspective. If we could not judge, we would have no way of knowing what to think of our behavior upon reflection and therefore not be able to improve.

When we learn to take a closer look at how our internal reality is effecting our external reality the real world of exploration begins.  One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from the French author Marcel Proust. “The real voyage discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” It speaks to the idea that as we grow and learn the eyes through which we see the world changes.  Also, as we learn to clear the lens from the internal eye, the clearer we can see.  The internal clearing is that of our hearts and minds.  When we discover ideas and feelings lurking in our hearts that disturb us or surprise us it is important to embrace them.  By acknowledging and accepting them as what is we meet ourselves where we are.  We cannot change or alter the direction of our vision by wishing it were different or shoulding it away.  The lurking elements of ourselves only have power when they stay in the shadows or concealed by shame. Our internal awareness means we can bring them into the light.  We can reach to God to find the place of compassion for their presence and allow them to know they need not lurk about unknown anymore.  If we are willing to be courageous we can make enough space for them to find what is underneath the lurking elements.  Most often it is an attempt to take care of ourselves while well-intended also has or has had adverse consequences in the landscape of our lives.  I cannot say that each time I discovered a part of myself lurking in the shadows that I jumped to embrace it.  The first quarter or so of my life I ran from them, told myself I was bad, and stuffed it down with food. In recovery, as I sat in rooms where people shared what was lurking in them and how they learned to not hide them my courage to face what was lurking in me.   With it came the willingness to share what was lurking within me with God on our daily dates.  In the space of our time together I found God to not have the contempt or fear that I had of what was lurking in me.  It was then that I came to know God as a power greater than myself.

I find myself torn between what is the right thing versus the wrong thing.  Which is God’s will and which is my will? What happens if I do not do God’s will?  What happens if I think I am making a choice from my heart and I am actually just letting my ego convince me that what it has contrived in my brain is coming from my heart? What if?  What if? What if?  As someone prone to thinking too much, this can be a treacherous place to be. When I remember to pause and breathe and reach for the hand of God I find myself returning to my heart space.  Somehow the language of my heart knows the answer I cannot conceive of.  The fault I find is that sometimes it takes a while for the translation to make it to my brain.  My heart speaks through energy which I perceive often in my body and in my feelings.  Before recovery, I made villains of both of those things.  The restoration to connecting to my own truth comes therefore when I pause to not make the body and the feelings wrong.  I also do not use them as my only guide in my decisions.  It is a restoration to its equal place of importance with my mind.  I sense this is how the spirit moves in and through us. When there is no friction between our hearts and our minds, we can see clearly and move through whatever we are facing.  We may not like it, it may be uncomfortable and call for courage but courage is what beats from our heart.  It steps onto the seeming battlefield of life that our minds may have created through visions of fear. I picture Wonder Woman coming out of the trenches and walking through the battlefield to get to those on the other side who need to be saved.  I don’t have bombs but my friction is found in the fear thoughts which come at me from all sides.  Breathing into the rhythm of my heart gives me a path to a separate myself from the friction of my mind long enough to allow the oxygen traveling through my heart to make it to my brain.  In the space of cooperation, I can find a way to navigate whatever I am facing at the moment.

There are all kinds of whispers present in the world.  We tend to disregard them the same way we do not think much about how leaves rustle in the wind. Rustling is just what happens.  In the same way, the wind whispers through the trees unnoticed, our breath causes us to rustle internally.  Physically we know the rustle of the breath wakes up our lungs and ignites our heart.  It promotes the movement of blood and oxygen in our system.  If our heart is more than a pump, what might the rustle do to our energetic nature? God invites us to become aware of the rustle inside of us.  What is crackling in our energy when we awaken our hearts?  What is inviting us to pay attention when the rustle comes through us?  What might our minds be attuned to notice when we allow the rustle in our hearts to be noticed?  We are affected as a whole being by all that we give and receive.  When we pay attention to the rustle created in us when we breathe in we may know more about the rustle we create outside of us when we breathe out.

It seems to work out in life that we do not discover that we can get up until at first, we fall.  We do not know if we have the power to overcome it until we are burdened.  We do not know we have light within us until we find ourselves lost in the dark. To become acquainted with our rising we must make peace with our falling.  I used to think I needed or wanted a God that would protect me from the trials of life.  I thought that was how it worked.  The bible talked about the fall of man and the rising of Christ.  Yet if we look closer at the stories we see that all through that process of were stories of man who found a way to rise above their circumstances.  Maybe in the story of Jesus, God was trying to remind us of the glory of our rising.  Perhaps Jesus was showing us how powerful it is when we are in our rising no matter the circumstance.  It is the rising of light in our hearts that makes us willing to take one more step, open our eyes again, and find the courage stored within us.  Our rising in whatever situations we find ourselves is about acknowledging how we fall or what caused the fall and the recognition that the fall will not define us.  As an incest survivor, my childhood experience is not the end of the story.  My life in addiction and self-hatred is not the end of the story. My life is made glorious in the big and small risings I made after that every step of the way.  Sometimes I fall back in old feelings and memories. My rising begins the I take a breath and bring myself back to the present.  I do not need a God to rescue me from my experience.  I want to be in relationship with a God who whispers in my ear that I am more than who I think I am.  I want to be in relationship with a God that built within me a system by which my heart is awakened many times throughout the day and inserts the courage to begin rising from whatever or wherever I am in the moment.  We all have experiences that we would qualify as fallen times.  God invites us to be with ourselves in the fall and discover the courage built within us to begin rising.