Our journey began at the beginning of life. This life journey becomes my story and your story, our stories are connected. As I tell you my story, maybe you can see our stories merge and mesh together as we trip and stumble through life's uncertainties, in its victories and defeats. As we walk together in love, everyday can be a beautiful day!
“We're going on a bear hunt. We're going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day! We're not scared.
Uh-uh! A forest! A big dark forest. We can't go over it. We can't go under it.
Oh no! We've got to go through it! Stumble trip! Stumble trip! Stumble trip!
We're going on a bear hunt. We're going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day! We're not scared.” ~~from “We are going on a Bear Hunt” By Michael Rosen
As I venture out into the deep dark forest of life, I know that I know that life is beautiful. As I am tripping and stumbling through this journey, in those times that I don’t believe that I am fully loved or when I find myself wishing that things would be different, I am living my life in a model of scarcity!
If I stop and think about it, many of us have never really experienced what it means to be fully loved. Do we even know what unconditional love looks like? This journey has taken me around the mountain and through the forest a couple of times and I wonder if I have really found Love. I am aware of those times when I read a sentence like this one from Matt Kahn, “With every breath I take, love is always here.”
It takes a few moments to find my still point and settle into Love. To believe that love is always here, because ever so often Love certainly has a way of hiding itself, especially when I feel I really need to know that I am loved.
As I sit with my memories, I see how I have worked so hard to get love. The love I have received has not been perfect, or unconditional, it has been flawed by the giver’s own programming or life experience. As my giving of love has been flawed amidst my own programming of fear and scarcity. There is not enough love to go around especially when I am living in my fear based scarcity model. I can then identify by the virtue of my own judgments that people who are different from me and who don’t do things the way I want them done don’t deserve my love. How can I give people who are different from me love when I don’t feel loved? There is no way my limited love storage can discover a place for the ‘other’.
The thing is, I get so caught up in my own thoughts and education that it is so hard for me to see that I am fully loved. Only Infinite Love can turn the switch on. There is nothing I can do unless Infinite Love changes me, and I become aware that my religion is based on scarcity and fear. Only when I believe that I am coming from a place of absolute abundance, that I have more than enough love in me to look at my judgements on myself and other people or things that I think are unlovable.
I do battle to forgive people that I feel have hurt me, the struggle is real. For years I have wanted to be in a place of love and forgiveness, but I was never able to grasp how because I didn’t feel God loved me enough, so why should I love without getting something back. Why should I release my foot from their throat? They deserve judgement!
It is only when the light of love is turned on in my soul can I really see. The scales fall off the eyes of my heart. Then these words by Thomas Merton make sense to me, “inside each of us is a space that I can’t defile, it is a place where only God dwells, it is a place where I am fully me in Jesus, it is like a diamond that when the light hits it, beautiful colours are released, and I no longer can be cruel and violent.”
At the end of the “Beauty and the Beast” movie, Belle whispers; “I love you”, in the ear of The Beast. In that moment The Beast is fully loved as he is, the light of love is placed on that place in him that God has kept safe from human touch. At his resurrection he illuminates beautiful light, and he is transformed. Aren’t we like that? Aren’t we waiting for the kiss of love? It only comes from the one who loves us more, only then can we be changed. It is ever expanding and opening the way for more love.
I am surrounded by trees in this forest called life; I have found myself in a clearing and I have been sustained. I have been sustained for the journey ahead. What it will look like, I do not know. But this I do know; I am not fully prepared, but I have the freedom to choose whatever aligns to me and I am not afraid. There are people that want to help, I just have to call on them. I know the next steps will bring more healing because I see and believe in Infinite Love.
“I came upon what I call the axial moment in which our most intimate experience of who we are turns, as on a hidden axial of love, down through the pain into a qualitatively richer, more vulnerable place. It’s in the midst of this turning that we discover the qualitatively richer, more vulnerable place is actually the abyss-like, loving presence of God, welling up and giving up and giving itself in and as the interior of our healing journey.” ~~James Finlay
I do believe I can desire it. I do believe I can ask for it. I do believe I can ask for abundant living in Infinite Love, but I must wait patiently for it. “So, because our {love} is set on what is yet to be seen, we patiently keep on waiting for its fulfillment.” Romans 8:25 TPT
Infinite Love, show me how loved I am. Help me to believe You are in control of this very mixed-up world, I call home. Help me to see that in all things You are there. Help me to believe that I can let go of my education, my judgements and you will fill those places with love. Help me to be prepared to go through the dark forest of my disillusioned life to find you have been there all along. I am fully loved all the time. Thank you for taking me to the place of my pain, where you heal me. I ask that everyone who has not experienced that they are fully loved that you cut through the barriers of our belief system and set us all free to love the way you love. Set us free. We don’t want to be vessels of violence but vessels of love. Thank you that we can have our belief systems challenged and trust that you are in control even when everything seems doubtful. Infinite Love is always loving us, always. Please keep removing the plastic wrap of protection around my heart to reveal a heart where Infinite Love is.
"But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace {Love} I leave with you; my peace {my love} I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid" ~~John 14:26-27.