The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. – Mark Twain
I’m a visual learner so I really enjoy YouTube but I still have a habit to read at least three books a month and a novel. It really depends on how I feel or what kind of a book I’m reading. Some of the books I read over and over again to get it through my brain and let the good stuff drips to my heart… one drip at a time. I’m ok… I’ve done what I was meant to do at a time when I did what I did. No regrets. I am at peace with my imperfection and in harmony with the gift of brilliance of the mind God gave me. That it’s never about me, but about Him who put me together in my mother’s womb.
Sometimes I feel like I haven’t done enough good to the society. Sometimes I feel like I’ve failed in my journey to serve others. But then I realize that it’s not about keeping score. It’s about keeping track of where I have been, where I am now, and trace the footsteps of the One who called me to follow him. Sometimes I think he stops and wait for me on the roadside.
As I wrote last week about the importance of journaling, our walk with God is really about self-awareness. Dr. Eldredge in his book, The Sacred Romance, changed my perspective of who God is and what it means to walk with Him. It reminded me that I was loved even before the creation of this world. Thus, the journey is also about detaching from the past knowing I was in the plan.
“In a way, it means that we stop pretending: that life is better than it is, that we are happier than we are, that the false selves we present to the world are really us. We respond to the Haunting, the wooing, the longing for another life. Pilgrim begins his adventure toward redemption with a twofold turning: a turning away from attachment and a turning toward desire. He wanted life and so he stuck his fingers in his ears and ran like a madman (“a fool,” to use Paul’s term) in search of it. The freedom of heart needed to journey comes in the form of detachment. As Gerald May writes in Addiction and Grace,
Detachment is the word used in spiritual traditions to describe freedom of desire. Not freedom from desire, but freedom of desire … An authentic spiritual understanding of detachment devalues neither desire nor the objects of desire. Instead, it “aims at correcting one’s own anxious grasping in order to free oneself for committed relationship to God.” According to Meister Eckhart, detachment “enkindles the heart, awakens the spirit, stimulates our longings, and shows us where God is.
With an awakened heart, we turn and face the road ahead, knowing that no one can take the trip for us, nor can anyone plan our way.”