If you come from a broken home like I do I believe the following discoveries God has been helping me to see in the last few decades, have the potential to shed some light on your own path. I began to notice over the years how I always came into relationships with set expectations I was looking to have fulfilled. The problem was not so much the expectations I had, which were unhealthy in their own right, but the fact that they never seemed to be met. This, of course, was not the consequence of others not trying to meet them as much as it was actually me not even knowing what they were in the first place.
When we live a life that draws its energy and validation from the quality of our ongoing performance it is very likely that we will spend most, if not all of our time, fixing problems instead of creating something original and new. A great example that shows the difference between these two approaches is what Apple did with the Mac. When the time came to create a Mac they didn't set out to improve or make a product that would somehow fix or get rid of the problems that the existing PC laptops in the market had. Instead, they sat down and aimed to create something that would give us an experience that no other PC laptop user ever had.
Allowing God to undress us in the desert is not pleasant nor comfortable yet believe me when I tell you that what is uncovered once he does makes it well worth it. Below I would like to share with you some of the transformations I have been experiencing in my life during the last 14 years as I have roamed into some of the darkest and unhealthiest places within me. These changes have happened as I have accepted the grace to be able to shed the labels that I had come to identify my life with which were of course not true. The pain and the suffering in some of these areas was and still is at times very real yet the underlying message they led me to believe about myself was not.
Over the last 8 years I have written quite a bit. Obviously like everything in life I have progressed over time the more I have written. These days is easier to find ways of communicating what is in my heart, but if I am brutally honest I still struggle with the thought of not being as relevant and convincing as other authors are out there. Only the other day as I was meditating on this feeling I felt God whisper into my heart "Pablo keep it simple as it is not your relevance or ability that produces the results. That part is for me to take care of." I must admit that this took me by surprise as clearly coming from a background of high performance sports I am all for honing our skills on our way to mastering our craft.
We often hear people say that there are at crossroads in their lives. Like many of us, I too have often found myself in what seems like a T junction where one can only go one way or the other but no longer ahead. This way of describing a moment of decision has often added much unnecessary pressure as we assume that one way is right and the other, well it will lead our lives to the wrong place. As I have faced these moments over and over and in fact find myself in one at this very moment I have come to realize as I spend time contemplating that in this way of doing life we don't reach T junctions but instead roundabouts.
Over the last 8 years I have written quite a bit. Obviously like everything in life I have progressed over time the more I have written. These days it's easier to find ways of communicating what is in my heart, but if I am brutally honest I still struggle with the thought of not being as relevant and convincing as other authors are out there. Only the other day as I was meditating on this feeling I felt God whisper into my heart "Pablo keep it simple as it is not your relevance or ability that produces the results. That part is for me to take care of." I must admit that this took me by surprise as clearly coming from a background of high performance sports I am all for honing our skills on our way to mastering our craft. Yet with God, even though hard work and progress is good, it nevertheless appears to be the other way around.
So often in life we strive and are so consumed with figuring God out that our urgency and anxiety actually causes us to miss him. For example over the years I have spent many quiet times in the mornings doing anything and everything but being quiet. During these times my prayers have been noble and centered on the usual requests for things and ways in which I wanted God to show up and show me, yet all I heard was silence. For some years now I have chosen to spend more of my time silent. You see, remaining quiet has helped me to center myself and be present and most importantly aware of what he wants to do with and in me on any given moment. It has helped me to relax my perspective and shift my attention to begin to understand which is the language that God uses most of the time he speaks to us.
The Israelites left Egypt where they were slaves for several hundred years. As they came out to the desert God waited for them longing to woo them much the same way that a man woos a woman during courtship. Things unfortunately started to go South very quickly when the Israelites did what most of us normally do which is to put the face of Pharaoh (who/what we live to please) over the face of God. This action implants in us an erroneous view of God which means that we try to relate with him much the same way we did/do with the one who has wounded us the most. In their case, Pharaoh, with whom they knew no relationship was possible apart from one that revolved around hard labor. He gave them their marching orders and they performed them. As long as they did this all was well and they were allowed to survive.
Not long ago I sat listening to someone speak about their relationship with God and the way He involved himself in this persons life. As I sat there I saw the face of yet another individual light up when he began to explain to me how God paid him from time to time, in an amazing way, a visit in his life. Inevitably every time I hear something like this I am led to ask the person where was God all those other times when he was supposedly not visiting them in an amazing way? And believe me that while I understand what people mean I see this picture as being the same as someone saying that within their marriage the only time they are aware of their partner is when they are having sex with them.
God says do not harden your hearts – I have been meditating about this for a little while now in the hope of being able to understand in a practical way what this might look like and how it impacts our lives when it happens. I began for some reason to think about muscles and how they work and are renewed. As I sat there I tensed the main muscle on my leg and kept it tense for a short while. As I did this I noticed that even though this was a voluntary movement it nevertheless rendered my muscle useless as in this state of tension nothing could enter nor exit from it. I also noticed that unless I relaxed it the muscle would cramp up and remain hard and in pain until treated.
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