Awakened to Love

      “The Lord will give you the bread you need and the water for which you thirst. No longer will your Teacher hide Himself, but with your own eyes you shall see your Teacher, while from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears; ‘This is the way; walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or to the left. And you shall consider unclean your silver-plated idols and your gold-covered images; you shall throw them away like filthy rags to which you say, ‘Begone!’”                  Isaiah 30: 20-22

     My heart and soul are still so full of gratitude for the great grace of “awakening” my dear Lord has granted to me. He has convicted me of the sheer madness to choose anything other than Him. 

     Each morning, as I plan my day, God is speaking to my heart; My will…not yours. He is reminding me to listen to His voice throughout the day, as the plans that I have made, may change to His liking.  Papa reminds me that by accepting the change as coming from Him, I will keep my peace and open my heart to the grace to carry it out with love. God is calling me to die in many ways to myself and it makes me laugh, that I had become so deaf to what I should have been doing. 

     I had unknowingly become more self-centered…sometimes picking and choosing what I’d like to do. Putting off or delaying the difficult tasks or the tasks that I really do not enjoy. 

     God has shown me that when I choose those undesirable tasks, I am choosing to love Him, because I am embracing His will and not my own. And in doing that, I am expressing my love for God. I am choosing Him and not the task. I am choosing to grow more in love with Him. 

     In the last number of weeks, I have had to make myself do things I truly didn’t “feel” like doing. In the beginning, it was difficult, but in the course of the “doing,” my love for God was growing and with that, a deep gratitude for His loving direction. Saying “yes” to God and “no” to self has made what was bitter, now sweet.

     The scope of His teaching is honing in on numerous areas of my life: my husband, trying to be more in tuned with his needs rather than mine; my children, trying to be connected but not “needy,”; family and friends, trying to be more aware of them than of myself, as well as many other ways.

     Another teaching God has highlighted is to accept and receive what He allows in my life, in His permissive or ordaining will, as coming directly from Him. Along with accepting it, to believe, or at least to make an act of faith, that since God has allowed it, He WILL, eventually, bring some good from it. 

     At times, this takes everything in my power to make this difficult act of faith, while desperately clinging to the belief in the goodness of God and His great love for me. 

     It is a real turning toward God and looking at Him. 

     When my youngest child was a toddler, and I was feeling somewhat weary of playing, I would turn my gaze away from him. He would put his little hand to my face, turn it towards him and say, “Don’t look at that. Look at me.” 

     I believe that our good God is often doing the same thing to us, when we are busy looking everywhere else but to Him, to fill those holes in our hearts. 

     I do not want you to think that my struggles are behind me. They are not. 

     I still get tempted on many levels of weaknesses that plague me. The difference now is that God has awakened me to the ludicrousness of giving in to my inordinate desires, when He is really Who I am hungry and thirsty to receive. At those times, I turn my gaze toward Him, usually sighing as I pray, “Fill me Lord with Your love. I know nothing but You will truly fill me. Help me to love and choose You instead.” 

    It isn’t a magic formula, or an instant “fix.” This is when God is testing how steady my love and trust in Him really are. “Probe me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts” Psalm 139: 23. The “feeling” of hunger or thirst may not go away. I sometimes need to pray a number of times, while clinging to Him, like someone thrown overboard in a raging storm. Jesus is saying to me, “It is I. Do not be afraid” John 6:20. I need to remember He is there with me and place my trust in Him.

     God has allowed the storms of temptation, not to harm me, but to strengthen me. These temptations also allow me to know how weak I still am! Each time I respond to His grace to say no to myself and yes to Him, I am exercising the muscles of virtues that had grown weak. God is helping me to repeat these exercises, over and over again, until those muscles become strong once more. 

     I am placing my hope in God and not in myself or my strength. Papa has shown me what I am on my own…able to do no good! But I am convicted that “I have the strength for everything through Him who empowers me” Philippians 4:13. 

     St. Teresa of Avila’s words have touched my heart and have given me encouragement to continue on my quest of reaching perfect union with God.

     “Her heart is full of joy with love, for in the Lord her mind is stilled. She has renounced every selfish attachment and draws abiding joy and strength from the One within. She lives not for herself but lives to serve the Lord of love in all, and swims across the sea of life, breasting its rough waves joyfully.”

     Let us pray for the grace to say, “Begone,” and swim joyfully, through the rough sea of life, with our eyes fixed on the One we love, till we are one with Him in love.

     St. Teresa of Avila, please! Pray for us!