Vision – To See Again the Light

Light in the Darkness - Reneedar on TravelPod

I just realized that I’ve been living in someone else’s universe for the past week or so.  In her universe there is only the hope or opportunities that we make for ourselves, the only things that happen are things that she understands, and people who aren’t the right size and shape don’t get anything good.  This friend spends a lot of time telling her self what she CAN’T have and why.  She spends a great deal of energy explaining to her self why her life is so small so as to avoid future disappointment.  It’s kind of embarrassing to admit I’ve been living there with her – but not a surprise really.  I lived in the same universe for many, many years.  It is a painful, hollow, empty place to live – hopeless and predictable.  I have expended a great deal of time and energy over the past 5 or 6 years to relinquish those old beliefs and to learn for myself what I really believe.  When I became aware of how easily I had been called back into that old way of thinking I was saddened.  Yet, I don’t escape the darkness by focussing on darkness, the way out is to focus on the light.

So, I thought I would take a moment to tell you what I REALLY believe.  I would offer up to you a vision of the universe which fills me with hope and joy.  This is it:

I believe we inhabit an abundant universe full of blessing and opportunity. I believe the God who made that universe is still here, loving the creation and all who inhabit it.  God’s Spirit actively seeks those who are willing to know freedom and happiness and walks with those seekers along their path.  I believe that God is a God of excessive, expansive, awesome miracles.  In this universe miracles happen all the time and I just don’t see them because I’m not looking.  The universe I inhabit is too big and amazing for me to get my head around – so things that I can’t understand happen all the time.  Not just the things that express our brokenness and hopelessness, but things that reverberate with light and life and laughter.  In fact I EXPECT that good will happen, remarkable, inexplicable good and I try and pay attention so I can respond with the appropriate hand clapping wonder and delight.

THIS is the foundation on which my life is built.  For years I claimed that very same truth for every one else but constantly reminded myself that I was too “fat, ugly, and stupid“, or any number of other things, to deserve any of those blessings.  My journey in the past few years has been to allow my heart to open to the truth that this same abundant, amazing life is a gift to ME as well as the rest of you.  Today I claim it.  I do not judge my friend for where she resides – it is a far cry from where she was a year ago – but I fail her when I join her in the darkness instead of calling to her from the light.  My place is here, in the light, with all of you.  She is here too, she just doesn’t know it yet.  May I be the voice that reminds her.