I really enjoy being patient. I like the calmness that comes over my heart. I like exercising a sense of peace.

It is healthy to nurture our ability to wait. Being able to wait for someone to understand, wait for a behavior to change, wait for good timing.

I like being patient because I feel like I am serving others. I suppose, in this way, patience is love. When I am tutoring a challenging student and I need to be extra patient, I find a great satisfaction in it, because I am doing it for someone else.

Maybe it is more difficult to be patient when we are selfish. How can we wait for others if we put ourselves first?

Death of Self

“There was a day when I died; died to self, my opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren or friends; and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God." ~ George Mueller

This is not a statement to make lightly.

Mueller speaks of the death of the self. This comes through intense suffering. We don't wake up one day and simply "die to self" because we "want" to.... The self never wants to die.... That is why its death is so painful, why we lose so much over the course of our lives, why it's so hard to let go.

Faith is a constant practice. It must be maintained through a lifetime, just like a good diet or exercise. The death of self might occur... but that doesn't mean that doubt can't slip in again. It is a narrow path.

My prayer when I was younger was for God to let me suffer so others didn't have to. Now I pray for the strength to survive; the strength to shoulder my own suffering, never mind that of my neighbor. Life is a lot harder as an adult than as a child; the faith that was so easy to maintain when I was young and sheltered is now challenged almost daily. It is not challenged by thought, but by action -- am I generous enough, patient enough, caring enough to my fellow man? Or am I becoming like everyone else, terrified, focused only on survival, too tired and frustrated to pay attention. This is a new faith I am learning; a faith that demands action in the real world outside a Church or a book. It must come from the inside, no matter what the circumstances. A faith that must extend to include others; to embrace others as they are, without demanding change or perfection. God didn't make us to be perfect, but He did make us to love.

Giving Love vs Taking Love

And again, you have heard me, and answered.

Thank you, God, for watching out for my family.

A moment of truth: that I want to die for them, everyone. Does that make sense? That in the deepest core of my heart is this eager yearning to sacrifice, to place myself upon an altar. God, I want to give all of myself to you, to them. In some ways, I suppose I already have -- it was an even trade, was it not? My heart for Yours?

I am in love now, I suppose, with a man. We are together; he is a blessing, and people are not made to be alone. But even love distracts from this burning desire in my heart. It is not something that I could ever share, nor have I ever shared, with anyone else. It is my deepest secret, this yearning desire to sacrifice my life for the world. I've never been in this place before, where a relationship is a cold ember compared to the love between me and God. I do not need anyone, though I am happy to share my day with someone else. I am happier now, I feel the ability to move forward, even if I am a different person than I was before. I am still familiarizing myself with all of the changes, all of the ways I have grown, and the spikes and slivers where I am still the same. I am more of myself. I am a new self? I am no one.

With God, I am whole. I am empty, and I am whole. It becomes a duality, it blurs, it is one thing, wholeness and emptiness, like a cup full of light, weightless, filled to the brim. And in love now with a man, I can see the difference, I can recognize God's love as a giving love, a selfless love, unconditional. When we fall in love, infatuation, it is a taking love, a judging love, an evaluating, selfish thing. Love evolves, but this is how we begin, not knowing the difference between taking love and giving love. I see the challenge of marriage: to transform the selfish to the selfless; to understand ourselves and both separate and entwined. It is the journey of the heart; the evolution of the soul. God, you are brilliant. Through our need for one another, we come to know You, even if we do not realize Your work.

Love Letters VI

And where are You, but in my very thoughts and mind?

You are my heart, when it is quiet in prayer.

You are the time I spend on the grass, sitting and watching all that moves around me; never a moment devoid of wonder, when one looks and sees the Spirit.

And in dreams, where I have seen Your art drawn for me, symbols on bleeding hands....

And waking, when I hear your voice the strongest, sweet in the morning, when all is placid as the unbroken surface of a lake... What is Your music, Lord? This endless sound, it is Your name, over and over in my heart, Your name....

And when we sit and write, we are never alone. When we speak and whisper, when I confide to you my dreams and hopes, and laugh, because you are the one who planted them, so of course you must know, but still I must confess, because the heart is treacherous steep....

But God, do I not already know? And though worldly things slip by me, cunning wisdom, sleek words and deft hands... do I not stand by the bed of a dying man, and feel his seconds draining, feel Your peace in the room, and know exactly where he goes? I am blind, but not to Your work, Lord.

And you whisper things, and I hear them.

In sincerity, to a friend....

We can never know ourselves, because the self is impermanent, it is constantly changing, just like our lives, just like our interests and passions. Even those things in us that feel permanent, that seem like lifelong goals or hobbies, are simply impulses of the body.

It is the illusion of a permanent self that causes suffering, because we become too attached to it. It is important to remember that when we die, we take none of this with us, not our hobbies, not our achievements, not even our trauma. We must live every day meditating on death. It is in death that we find freedom; we find the wisdom to live here and now, to appreciate each day for what it is worth, and to forgive the past.

What could have been? Nothing else than what is. The only permanent cure to suffering is forgetting ourselves in our love of others. That's why, in many cases, our children become our saviors. Because in our children, we find unconditional love. Unconditional love allows us to be as we are. By experiencing the unconditional love of another, we are also allowed to practice unconditional love. True freedom can only be found in unconditional love. It makes all suffering sweet.

Recent studies in holistic Psychology are discovering that a better cure for depression is "meaningfulness." People who find more meaning in their lives are found to overcome depression faster and have less relapses. What is meaning? Meaning is found in the things we give away freely. What is the easiest thing to give freely? Love. If you cannot be generous with your money, become generous with yourself. Give your time freely to others. Indulge yourself in their cares and worries. Practice love daily.

What I never told you about my sublime experience is that it was a sacrifice. I gave up myself in the need to know God. When I cried out, "God, I need you!" what I really said was "God, I do not need myself." And in God, the smaller self was destroyed and I was given wholeness, I was given unconditional love. I was given something greater than myself, something that allowed me to create endless meaning in my life... because it was no longer my life, it became Our life. This is why I am able to pass through my suffering unscathed. All things are sacrifice, and all sacrifice has been made to fuel my love. I have found a place in my heart where no matter the storm, I can say, "God, this is for You."

Never wonder who you are. We are what we can do for others. All else is up to God.

Please God, I know your miracles, and I see your blessings in the lives of those I love, even those who remain distant from you.

Please God, hear my sincere prayers. Please God, save them, deliver them from their struggles. Let rain your blessings.

I do not believe there is punishment in the Kingdom of Heaven. No, there is only change, and change, though we do not always like it, is the greatest evidence of God's design.

God, please deliver those I love from the evil of their own imperfections. Please God, protect them from the sins of others, from selfish intentions and honest mistakes. Please God, forgive them on my grace, because they do not know you, and it is not their fault. Please God, be a Father to them as You are to me, because that is my humble request. Show them Your unconditional love. Save them.

Confessions IV

God, it is all so hard, you make me want to hide in your walls, under your bench, and never crawl out again.

I am burying myself in your fields, Lord.

It isn't healthy to smother ourselves, but sometimes that's all we can do. Sitting still is too painful, and when we are still, we feel all of the motion inside of us, the unending surges of grief and hope, of longing and despair, frustration as we try to understand ourselves and why we feel like we are drowning.

But we are drowning with You, Lord. You made this ocean.

Oh Lord of my Heart -- why bring me to my knees when I am already upon them in prayer?