The search for heaven . . .

I was in hell.

I have found heaven.

Heaven.

Where exactly is that place?

Several days ago I was reading in my devotional book Jesus Calling about heaven. At one point, Sarah Young, the author, writes:

"Your longing for heaven is good because it is an extension of your yearning for Me. The hope of heaven is meant to strengthen and encourage you, filling you with wondrous joy."

Not five minutes after reading that passage, my eight-year-old son came stumbling into the room, rubbing his eyes, and croaking a cute "Good morning, Mama" to me.  Our morning routine, be it when he gets up or when his daddy drops him off in the morning on his way to work, is for my "little" monkey to come into my room, grab a snuggly blanket, and climb into my lap so we can pray together and snuggle afterward. Once he tires of snuggling, he then starts saying the typical eight-year-old boy things like poop and fart and can I please please please watch a YouTube video about how to turn copper pennies into pure gold, but for a few minutes anyway - I'm in heaven.

It was at this moment a few days ago - after heaven faded and the bathroom words began - when I felt a stab of guilt as I realized that I really didn't want to go to heaven. That I kind of like my new life - the new me. For the first time IN my life I actually love ME, and I intend to do this for many more years. I'm sure heaven is completely awesome, but my snuggle time in the morning feels very close to what I believe heaven could be. And that's when I started to wonder . . .

Can we create heaven for ourselves right here on earth before our spirit and body separate? Did God say you HAVE to die before you can go to heaven? Maybe this death could be metaphoric - more like the death of the old self and birth of a brand new. So what did I do? I went online and researched what others believed. This is where things got really complicated...

Being a well-educated woman and a logical, most things that are brought to me need to be brought to me with a "how this works" label, clear directions, and black and white lines. I need proof of pretty much everything - including whether my children actually did brush their teeth this morning. Digging into other people's beliefs in heaven was a HUGE mistake.

Nothing was backed by providential evidence, in my opinion, but there's where my faith lags. The absolute need for solid, tangible proof. And yet, my faith in The Almighty is solid. Let me explain that part of my faith comes from the fact that I have experienced, first hand, the glory of God. I have wept in his presence, cold and alone, and felt the comfort that could only come from the Holy Spirit. Because of this, I will never veer from the path of the Lord again. No human could even come close to the compassion, forgiveness, love, and comfort that I have been gifted by the Divine. That evidence is tangible, in my opinion. He knew it is what I needed to come back to Him, and so he allowed me to wallow in my misery until I turned to him and felt that peace wash over me. Then, and only then, could I logically understand that God truly does exist AND that he loves me unconditionally - another strange phenomenon of which I was unfamiliar. Unconditional love.

Ironically last week I received my daily devotion email from the Center for Action and Contemplation - a Richard Rohr meditation. What was the subject? Heaven, of course. Rohr believes that heaven begins here on earth with our own connection to Christ. That we create our own capacity to give and receive love through our own God-given free will, and that that capacity is the doorway to heaven here on earth. That death is a mere extension of what we have created through the love of Christ here on earth.

In a conversation I had yesterday with my own sister-in-Christ and long-term friend, she listened to me talk about my thoughts on heaven, and she, too, expressed the need to believe that there was something more after death - that we can, indeed, begin to create heaven here for ourselves here, but that after death, that continues.

Rohr agrees with her. His view is that we will continue to live and grow, even after death. That our souls, if we permit, will grow infinitely closer to God, even after death. But it must start here on earth.

I'd been considering a second blog about prayer until this morning when I realized that my blog topics actually parallel. Debbie Macomber, fiction writer, wrote a book called Angels at the Table. In this book, the angels Surely, Goodness, Mercy, and Will were sent down to earth by Gabriel as prayer ambassadors to work on answering a prayer that had gone unanswered for about ten months. As they were working on divine guidance, Will, the apprentice angel, saw an unrelated incident that he wanted to fix because he saw another human suffering. His mentor angels stopped him. In confusion Will asked why he couldn't help the woman in distress.

Their response is that, as prayer ambassadors, they were only allowed to guide in answering prayers. This woman had clearly not asked for intervention. Will contemplated for a moment before asking his next question. "What if she asks too late?"

The angels' answer made so much sense to me. God delights in answering prayers of necessity. He wants us to ask - "Ask and you shall receive." I think it's kind of his way of making us responsible for ourselves and creating humans who don't just expect provision. But those who stay close to Him and ask for daily guidance will likely be veered off in a direction that remains close to Him. We realize early enough that we need to begin asking for guidance for things that may turn into potential disasters, and he can guide us in how to begin dealing with them. If things become too intense, He picks us up and holds us. Those who choose human-will on a daily basis may walk a path that gets further and further from Him. A last minute effort to save a situation with a prayer may be too late for Him to guide anyone through a tough situation. God creates miracles, but his first promise is to teach us and allow us free will. And, like a good parent, he allows us to suffer consequences so that we can learn.

Once the learning process begins, we begin to create our own heaven right here on earth. I created hell for myself and wallowed in that torment for years. Currently I believe I am in my own heaven, and I believe that it's okay to feel this way. My minute-by-minute "check in" with Jesus helps me to stay clearly attached and know that I will be provided with the guidance I need to complete tasks that I would have considered uncomfortable, awkward, painful, and just downright icky - all while maintaining my close walk with Him.

The day of my divorce I anticipated to be one of the most difficult days of my life. Did I cry? Yeah. The night before I slept horribly, but every time I woke up I prayed that God would hold me again, and He did. That morning I prayed nonstop throughout the entire proceeding. I prayed for wisdom to speak to the judge - and even though lies were spoken and my ex-husband's lawyer was mean, I maintained composure. I cried before it. I cried after it. And then I allowed the Holy Spirit to wash over me and allow me to feel Its presence. It took me a few days to shake myself off, but this had been a long time coming, and I feel better now. Believe it or not - I was still in heaven. My heaven. The one that I asked Jesus to create for me here on Earth. I grew. I learned. And healing has begun.

Namaste.

Who is God?

Something has been troubling me deeply about my walk with God, and I just need to get it out so I can process through. Currently I’m reading A Case for Faith, which is a great read if you haven’t read it. I haven’t finished it, and it’s taking me a long time to finish because I haven’t really made the time to sit down and read, but I’m asking Santa for a few more hours in the day and some time management advice, so maybe in January I’ll get that book finished up.

My faith is stronger than it has ever been. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a God and that Jesus died on the cross to save us all from an eternity in hell (whatever your definition of hell is). I can attest to the fact that once I confessed my brokenness and my need for the trinity to come hang with me, a peace has settled over me that I never thought I could ever be worthy of having. God is there. Real. I feel him every day.

But something has really been bugging me. I'm struggling with my logical side because logic tells me that there is no "man upstairs". That faith in God means that there is faith in a being that I can't even comprehend. That my definition of God today is not what my definition of who he was when I walked with him twenty-five years ago. Him . . . her  . . . ? 

I practiced mindfulness for ten years without totally comprehending what it meant to self-love. And nobody noticed. Of course I believed in God without a true comprehension of who God really was. Isn't that what faith is all about? Not for us logicals it's not. It's hard to have faith . . . and yet I watch my eight-year-old logical talk about evidence that does, indeed, prove over and over again that God, does in fact, exist. The faith of a child is a beautiful and wonderous thing. I wish I had it.

Who is God? It wasn't until recently, honestly, that I finally had a true understanding of how the Holy Spirit works. Why am I forty-two and just now understanding that my internal guide is the Holy Spirit speaking to me - that that Spirit lives inside of me  and speaks to me the way God does? I'm just now understanding that God sends his Holy Spirit to walk with me day and night and to take over my mind, my mouth, and my actions when I give my will over to it. 

I know who Jesus is. He is God's son, sent to earth to help God learn how being human can really suck sometimes and also to shed his blood and clean us up after we make a mess of our lives because we can't seem to give in to the Holy Spirit all the time. 

Well, this morning I was reading in Jesus Calling like I do every morning. Often, my devotion will remind me that I need to need God. That I cannot adult on my own - that I'm needy for the Lord to use his Holy Spirit to guide me. It's like God is the dispatcher, and the Holy Spirit is the policeman running to call after call in my head. But only if I call upon God first. Otherwise, he sits quietly.

This is circular, I know, but stay with me. God. Who is he? His spirit dwells within all of us, and yet he is all around us. The air we breathe, the sound of the birds, the breeze. He's here. Not sitting up in a throne in the sky. That's why we only have to whisper the name Yahweh and His spirit responds immediately with relief and eventually guidance.

I fell short of this today. How easily it can happen, honestly. I lost it on somebody I do not even know who was just trying to do her job at the cell phone company. I refused to stop and ask Got to dispatch. I can do this on my own, right? I ended up in tears after trying to reason with this woman who obviously wasn't budging on her stance, and I am still paying for a cell phone that I can't use. Nothing was accomplished except now I have a headache, my eyes are puffy, and I'm in a foul mood. 

But you know what? The Spirit told me to sit down and write. So that is what I am doing. I'm in tuned with His will now. I can feel it. It's no longer my will. It's His. His will for me is to step outside of my logical self and have faith that he truly exists. And tonight, faith is what I have. Namaste.

On prayer

I've been reading Richard Rohr's Breathing Underwater for over a month, and for a book with only 147 pages, it's sure taken me a long time to get through it. Each sentence is almost physically chewable, not to mention circular, impactful, and applicable to my life. In the book Rohr parallels the Twelve Step program with spirituality - since that's what it was based on in the first place. But he digs in so deeply, I wonder if Bill Wilson (aka Bill W, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous), even knew how transformative those twelve steps could actually be.

Step ten requires me to improve my contact with God - which comes at a perfect time, as my walk rollercoasters over great hills at times, and currently I'm in a low valley. Of course, when anybody discusses contact with God, one of the first things that pops into mind is prayer. But read the step. Read it carefully.

We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood [God], praying only for knowledge of [God's] will for us and the power to carry that out.

As I read that over and over and over again, I got a hint that this is just how prayer should be. Instead of asking for this, that, and the rest, I need to ask for a simple communication line to be open so that I am open to hearing what His will is for me and how I should go about meeting his expectations for my life. Once that is established, this, that, and the rest may not matter.

God answers prayer. He provides all sorts of things, but until we can get our brains to unravel from our current way of thinking that God will be there to provide for us abundantly, He would go about his business, waiting patiently. It's our work on ourselves that he knows will either happen or not. He's a sneaky one, that God. Basically he wants us to pray to understand what HE wants for our lives and then for us to pray for it to happen.

I feel like this almost deserves an "LOL". Of COURSE it's going to happen! God has tricked us into praying for what HE wants! Haha! Answered prayers! I can attest that this works. I've struggled with acceptance of situations for my entire life. Take my divorce as a big one. I spent months praying for reconciliation, for my love for my husband to be restored, for him to concede to counseling - but those prayers went unanswered, like God was wearing a NOPE tee shirt. I was relentless. Then I started to change my prayers. I had been reading more and more about prayer and what the purpose of prayer was, and I started to pray things like if your will is and show me your will in this or what's next, Lord? And when my husband filed for divorce in May I finally felt the release - that God had said to me, It's okay, daughter. You have done what you thought was the right thing, but it is my job to protect your heart, and your work is done here. It's okay. I have plans for you.

Please do not misunderstand. I know it was never God's intention for my marriage to fall apart. It was never his intention for me to have an affair or get divorced. We all have free will, and I screwed up. Plain and simple. But last week when Scott started talking about step three and asking the Lord to take this mess and make it beautiful? I almost fell on the floor in happy tears because I feel so whole! God has worked a miracle in me! He's forgiven me and is now working on the next chapter of my life, and guess what! His will for my life will be completed because I pray for that to happen each day. I pray for his guidance in his next steps and for the means to carry out his plan. He has provided and will continue to do so as long as I align and open myself up to him. And that, my friends, is the key to step ten.

So my questions are this:

1. Is my daily prayer routine THAT easy? I simple prayer asking for guidance and for my eyes to be opened to His will? That's it? No prayers for friends and family?
2. How DO I pray for others? Ask Him to show THEM His will for them?
3. Why, when I think about this stuff and try to process it, as long as I don't think too hard or concentrate on it too long, I can sort of understand it, but if I dwell. It all goes away?

Feel free to comment on these questions. I'm interested in hearing what my readers are thinking and how we can learn from each other.

Namaste.