Well, the internet is out so I feel disconnected. Good thing You don’t waver, or wobble, or sputter, or just quit in a fit of pique. God, You really are amazing, like the songs say. You keep plugged in to our messy, noisy world, and our messy, noisy hearts. I think all I can think of to say about that is Thank You. It feels strange, being cut off. I need to upload photos for an ad I am on deadline for. I need to correspond with more than one artist. I need to remote in and check inventory for another artist. None of that can I do. So the fact that I cannot work leads me straight to remembering the playfulness of today, which was a surprise. As soon as I got out of the car I noticed three or four hearts scattered about the pavement—oil patterns, moisture patterns, leaves, trash… and that continued at the next stop, and the next. At some point I realized that my spotting them felt different somehow, as if You were playing with me, a kind of holy hide-and-seek, although these were easy to spot, like very young children running around and finding “hidden” colorful eggs in the yard. God-Play. I am so grateful for the notion I can scarcely express it!
Yes, you needed a dose of playful fun today. How did playing make you feel?
It energized me actually. The more I spotted hearts, even when I wasn’t overtly looking for them, the lighter my own heart felt. Wow, play as energy. Never thought of that, either.
And how do you feel now?
I feel the sort of tired I like to call good-tired. Actually, it is the same sort of tired after a very satisfying day outside, in fresh air. Thank You.
…And voila, the internet is back! Not without effort, though the tech support gal was friendly and genuinely supportive and helpful. One more modem reset later and I am connected again. So this immediately prompts an analogy: the reset button, how I need that myself. Sometimes, a lot! And how reset is almost spelled like rest. Hmmm.
So when you feel disconnected, you need to reset, and to rest. You don’t need to resist.
Resist?
Yes, you need to REST in what IS. You don’t have to fight it to change it. Resting in what is does not mean accepting something unacceptable, like bad service or bad behavior, even from yourself. It does mean acknowledging the reality in order to find the point of change. Change can be as simple as pushing the reset button.
In order to reconnect.
In order to re-establish from your own end a connection that always was present. The internet was not out on her end, was it?
No.
And there was no widespread outage as you once surmised.
No.
So the issue was entirely on your end, on your reception. And for that, you needed a reset.
Lord, is that like remembering what I already know? Like St. Paul says, writing the same things is not a bother to me and it is helpful for you. Like that?
Do you think that My saying the same things is a bother to Me?
I don’t know. Maybe, sometimes. Sometimes I think, I should be past reminding. Past needing a reset button!!
You know your own skin replenishes itself, sloughs off and rejuvenates repeatedly. In that process, you keep your own set of fingerprints. They don’t change. Think about that. A feature, unique to you in all the world, and through thousands of cycles of change in your lifetime, they remain your own. If the human body can refresh its outward appearance, yet remain itself, why can’t you refresh your soul and spirit, so as to remain your best self?
You are talking about fingerprints…and that makes me feel even worse, because I have been picking my fingers. As You know. As I am ashamed to admit.
Here is how I view that behavior: as a signal there is something disrupting the transmission between My Heart and yours. All I see in your behavior is a kind of static that distorts not so much My Voice–you are hearing Me clearly enough now–but your own. You tend to revert when you start to doubt yourself, when you question or second-guess yourself, or when you imagine others, especially those closest to you, are somehow hyper critical of your choices. You began the practice in early childhood over the sense that you were not smart enough for your father and not quite the young lady-child your mother wanted. You internalized those non-verbal feelings very young and never found a way to speak them, much less to hear what they might have answered. So I shall speak to those feelings, and on their behalf, right now. Are you ready?
Gosh. I don’t know what to say. I think so. I trust You, I know that.
The truth is, you were smarter, quicker, than your dad knew what to do with. He was raised to be competitive, and in the scheme of his birth family, to be the loser as the youngest brother. Imagine how he felt when his own child began to manifest evidence of a mind that hungered to learn and that synthesized meaning in ways he had never thought of. Mostly he was afraid he would lose you, lose your love. The truth is, once your creative gifts began to show, and once you began to be more at home outside in nature than inside playing with dolls, your mom did not know what to do, either. She was raised in an era that delineated clear roles for women and for men, with skill sets common to each role. You didn’t seem to have either the skills or the interests, so she, too, was afraid that you two would somehow grow apart if she encouraged you too much in being different than she was. By the time you were a teenager, they could not have been more proud of you, but by then, you had absorbed the ideals of perfect performance as a way to please them, and everyone else around you. What that did was rob you of knowing how much you were loved just for being yourself. By then, the pressure you were putting on yourself was much greater than either of them realized, and as I told you recently, you have carried this pressure for most of your life. It is much harder for you to live responsibly without that sense of pressure than it is for many others. And true to form, you take that pressure out on yourself. You internalize it, and then you expect more of yourself than you should, and then you are angry with yourself for not “doing better” and all the while it is easy to assume I Am the One setting such high standards. This is why it is no bother for Me to keep repeating to you, over and over and over, I Am with you, I Love you, and perhaps most important, I accept you and I release you. You can be yourself with Me. Your funny, witty, creative, thoughtful, goofy, happy-go-lucky, pollyanna self, the self you imagine others would like only parts of, you can be all of you, with Me. Don’t disconnect. Don’t let the static drown out your own voice. It is Music in My ears, truly. Set yourself free. Even if you have to do it over and over, set yourself free. As you said recently about prayer, One More Time.
Thank You, Lord. You have given me a lot to think about. I feel relaxed now. Even my tight calf muscles feel more relaxed. Somehow I think I can sleep, now.
Yes, little one. Sleep. Rest in My Love.