Renewing your mind switches you from worldly vision and identification to spiritual vision and identification, as we will see.
Confucius once said: "Happiness does not consist in having what you want, but in wanting what you have.”
With respect to Confucius, I would tweak that a little to say, “Happiness does not consist in having what you want, but in accepting (regarding as occurring, not denying) what is present in your life.
When we do that we are in the present moment and that’s where change occurs.
We learn in life from watching others. We learn from the positive examples of what to do, and from the negative examples of what kind of change that will bring in our own lives. A great deal can be learned from both sources, for all of life is a classroom.
The story I will share with you is a true story. It is the story of a real person who overcame the greatest lack and loneliness in her life…the lack of love.
(From When God Spoke To Me, by DavidPaul Doyle. Pages 184-188 “Awakening”)
STORY:
- Story by Kare Castle
- Her hands trembled as she clutched the steering wheel and repeatedly prayed, “Please, God, help me to see him through your eyes.”
- 3 days since she found her husband at home in a pool of his own excrement, unconscious from a drug overdose
- Now on her way to meet with him and doctor at psychiatric hospital
- Doctor had warned, “Be prepared to hear some very difficult stuff.”
- What, she wondered, could be more difficult than what she already knew?
- For instance… six years earlier she awakened on night with a deep sense that something was wrong.
- Couldn’t shake feeling. This was different than when the teenagers didn’t come home late. Then other reassuring thoughts would enter her mind – this was different.
- Kare started to pray, “Please God, show me where he is”
- At that moment she heard her husband crying and a clear distinct thought came to her – he’s by the pool
- Walked across entire apartment complex in her nightgown and found him by the pool, drunk and crying
- “I’m a terrible person” said her husband, “you shouldn’t be married to me”
- He went on to confess he got drunk regularly after work (2nd shift, Nurse) and that he’d been with a prostitute that night.
- Rather than be angry, Kare was in fear and self denial that night six years earlier
- “This can’t be!” she remembers thinking.
- Her husband had always been her higher power, her source of security and self-esteem
- Five years later in the waiting room of a rehab hospital she cried as her husband reassured her that all he needed was some help and he’d be ok
- She said she desperately needed to believe him, a need she had clung to desperately as he had started and stopped more rehab programs than she could count in those five years
- All through this 5 year period she had a nagging feeling that all was not well, still, she ignored the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as he made excuse after excuse about why he didn’t come home after work.
- She ignored her own wisdom that his excuses for quitting jobs and leaving support groups were neither reasonable nor credible.
- She ignored the voice for God as it came through other people who lovingly told her the truth: her husband had a serious addiction problem
- She chose to believe his lies because they supported her fantasy of how she wanted life to be – she wanted a marriage and a normal family
- Kare had been a young single mother and thought being married would erase her shame
- Being married, having a husband… he became her perceived redeemer and she wasn’t about to let that go of that
- After moving twice in search of the magic environment that would solve everything, Kare decided church would provide the spiritual nurturing she needed so badly
- But sitting alone in the congregation she was embarrassed by her husband’s absence
- Feeling depressed and lost, she says, “God offered her another way.” Start a spiritual support group for women
- This group kept her spiritually focused between meetings as she joyfully prepared for them
- This focus was crucial when her husband came home one day and confessed to using narcotics that he had been stealing from the hospital (remember, he was a nurse).
- Kare says she felt a moment of panic, but because she had been strengthening her spiritual support system and intentionally connecting with God, it had been easier for her to hear it
- At church right after that she enrolled in a class based on Maria Nemeth’s book, The Energy of Money.
- The underlying philosophy of that book is the way we handle money is the way we handle life.
- While working on a “money biography” she responded to most of the questions with, “I don’t know,” or, “I don’t remember” when she had an epiphany, “Oh my God,” she said out loud. “I have handled money completely unconsciously and that is exactly how I have been living my life – unconsciously.”
- In a moment of complete surrender she said a prayer that changed her life, “Dear God, please wake me up.”
- That was the night before she found her husband in the pool of his own excrement – an apt but devastating metaphor, she says
- And so we are back to the beginning of this story as she drives to the hospital chanting, “God, help me to see him through your eyes… let me see the perfection in this moment”
- As she sat in the stark hospital room and listened to him confess horrifying behavior related to sex addition, she remained calm
- As the behaviors he recounted became progressively more shocking, Kare says, the voice for God became progressively louder, over powering all the other sounds in the room, “All is well. Your peace and safety lie in your relationship with me.”
- Finally, she writes, her husband stared bewilderedly at her and said, “I don’t understand how you can be so calm. I am a monster.”
- Kare said she believed the Holy Spirit spoke through her in that moment as these words came from her mouth, “You have done some terrible things, but I know the truth of who you are. You are a child of God and for that reason, I forgive you.”In a simple prayer she said, "Dear God, wake me up!"
I may not know what your particular difficulty was, is, or may be, but I believe most of us have been through one or more difficulty, and it has brought us to that point where we have realized that Life is more important than material possessions and that we have realized that in the final analysis life is love… and the quality of our lives is dependent on how much love we express (extend) to both our inner world and the seeming outside world.
In that moment of intense clarity for Kare, she made the choice for love, and forgiveness” What a statement for this woman to make in that moment! I believe she had to realize that through forgiveness no one can take love away from her."
In that moment of the expression of forgiveness she overcame, as I said in the beginning, the greatest lack and loneliness in her life… she experienced the Presence of Love.
When you surrender – when you give up “efforting” on behalf of your unique individual point of view, life surges through you, changes happen and you begin “efforting” on behalf of the point of view of the Loving Presence we call God.
Now this very idea of living our lives for God, or from God, or through the eyes of God can be a very frightening prospect because we don’t want to give up our individuality. You won’t have to; God will use your unique individual expression to demonstrate the power and presence of Love. You will become a happier, more peaceful, incredible you!
Each of us has a story, and there is more to be written of your life. Your life is the story of your love… the opportunities that come to you to love.
What better life to have than a life that is filled, both incoming and outgoing, with the greatest, of all… God's love?
Let love radiate into all the opportunities that come to you.
Bless everything,
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