LOVE

LOVE… I did not know I could live here. Here in love. I always conceived being “in love” as a romantic venture involving another human being; which it can be, but it can also be a union where we live in love, with love, with God. I had experienced hell on earth, but never heaven. That is until I surrendered, surrendered to God’s perception of me; God’s ideal of me- highly valuable, good, a walking miracle. I had to surrender my perception of myself- not good enough, inadequate, unworthy- this perception was ingrained early on and I did not know how to get rid of it; so I just fought it. In fighting, we always lose. In surrendering, in giving up, in relinquishing control to the fact that the being created cannot define itself, but the Creator who created the being; I surrendered my awful, limited, useless notion of myself and choose the Creator’s conception of me. “All my life I had to fight”. Yes, this is what I did. Fight. Run around forcing things to be the way I wanted them to be; controlling myself, trying to control others, and then I saw that life and love was the opposite. Life and love says, “Give up, stop resisting”. Well I wish someone had told me. And truth be told, someone told me, but I wasn’t ready to receive the truth, so I just kept fighting and resisting and controlling and forcing and then I grew real real tired- which is what happens when you fight for 20, 30, 40 years; your spirit grows very very tired. Then God said, “Are you done?” And I responded, “Yes, I’m done”. “Good” God responded, “Now give up fighting and just let me love you”. You see it’s hard to let go and surrender to God’s love when you fight the truth. God the whole time is saying, “You are good enough”, Let me love you”, “I am in love with you!” All the while our junk get’s in the way, our abandonment, our molestation, our divorce, our hurts, our physical and emotional abuses experienced at the hands of loved ones, our own emotional and spiritual abuse. So we end up fighting ourselves, fighting God, because this is what “strong” people do. Well it’s hard to keep a muscle flexed for 4 minutes, let alone 25 years. I grew weary of being “strong”, I always had to be “strong” and “stronger”; well I was tired of being strong. I just wanted to be loved. Most of us don’t want to be strong, we just want to be loved and accepted for who we are, and this was true for me. I just wanted to be loved. Then God showed me that I didn’t have to be strong, I just had to open my spirit and heart to receive His Love, give love, surrender control and forgive myself and others. That was strength, love is strength,love was everything I was looking for my entire life. Then there was fear, always lurking in the background, always telling me, “But what if you’re not good enough?”, “What if you never get married?”, “What if you will be an awful mother?” You know fear, most of us know it very well, it motivates most of our actions and behaviors. That was me, motivated by fear, that’s one of the main reasons I have been academically successful, fear. There is the motivating force behind fear and then there is the reality about fear- it leads to death, death of spirit, death of emotional wellness, death of true happiness, death of love. God/Love helped me to see that I was light and love, you know all those clichés you heard and all those spiritual mambo jumbos, yeah, I experienced that, light and love. I’m experiencing myself as a loving, light filled being, just love, not alone, not unworthy, not inadequate, just love, just God’s reflection. So are you! You know it truly feels like heaven on earth. It is way more powerful than fear, love that is. It’s all that is, there is nothing else but love. I feel like I wasted time living in fear, but I didn’t know I could live in LOVE. Love, a state of being where I am forgiven, surrender, give love and receive God’s love continuously. I didn’t know I could live here, rent free, for eternity. But of course I can live here, because I am love, God’s love in human form. I am only returning to the source that created me, LOVE. How good is our GOD! Dinah Clark/ Miss Deliverance