DAY ONE DEVOTIONAL: BEING PRESENT TO GOD
In Exodus 3, God asks Moses to go to Egypt, confront the Pharaoh and lead God’s children out of bondage into freedom. To this job Moses replies, “Whoa, wait. You can’t be serious. Who am I?”
Most parents can relate to Moses feeling underprepared and overwhelmed. We too often find ourselves crying out, “Who am I to raise this precious and amazing little human being?” Like Moses, we are often tempted to make excuses and ask God to send someone else.
Someone more qualified…
a teacher,
a coach,
a youth pastor,
a children’s pastor.
To which God says, I AM. I AM WHO I AM. I exist. I AM real. I AM with you. I am Present. I will help you.
Later in the New Testament, we read about God drawing even closer in the person of Jesus Christ. And it is in and through Jesus Christ that God’s love for us is fully demonstrated. In fact, John, one of Jesus’ disciples, after spending time with the incarnate Word of God, sharpens the point on God’s presence by declaring, God is love. In other words, to be in God’s Presence is to be loved. God is always giving God’s self away to us in unlimited, unconditional generous love.
In Eugene Peterson’s translation of the New Testament, we read in Ephesians 5:1
“Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Most of what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.”
Consider today:
“Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not be afraid, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, I will also help you,
I will also uphold you with My strong right hand.’”
DAY TWO DEVOTIONAL: BEING PRESENT TO YOURSELF
Love Overflows. In 1 John 4 it says, “My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God.” (MSG)
There is an ordered sequence to the flow of Love. God is love. Love originates in the heart of God and flows toward us, making our number one priority to one of receiving; to open our hearts and allow God’s love to rush in.
First we are loved.
Then we love.
In other words, our ability to love others, including our children is limited by our ability to receive love, which comes from God. The more love we receive, the more love we can give. Loving others always begins with knowing experientially “I am the Beloved.”
But how do we know if we are actually receiving God’s love or have just become experts in playing religious games? Most of us “know” in our minds that God loves us, but do we experience that love in our hearts day by day, moment by moment? The test to knowing if we are actually receiving God’s love, rather than just talking a good game, is to pay attention to how much we love ourselves. Do you love you? A good place to start is by noticing your inner dialogue.
Do you speak to yourself with words that sound like Jesus or do they tend to be marked by condemnation and accusation?
God is love and God is loving you. Loving ourselves is an act of joining God. Failure to love ourselves is a failure to receive God’s love. Also, since God dwells in us and it is God’s breath giving us life, loving ourselves is a tangible way we can love God.
To be present to yourself is to recognize the fundamental reality of your own belovedness. The truth is God loves you. You can choose to believe it or not. But choosing not to believe it places us in the precarious position of existing outside of reality. To live as if you are not loved and worthy of love is to live in a made-up fantasy world. This is the illusory self Thomas Merton talks about. And this self, as an illusion, will never feel real, solid, or stable. It leads us in a position of constantly hustling for our own sense of worthiness.
But God’s love can never be earned. It is always and only freely given. Why not open our hearts in gratitude and receive God’s love. We know we are receiving God’s love when we begin to love ourselves. The more we receive love the more we are transformed by love into love and the more our capacity to love others increases.
Here is something to try. Before you look to your children to love them, try slowing down and turn your gaze inward, breathe deeply and allow yourself to sink into your heart where you meet with God and join God in speaking to yourself, “I love you.”
DAY THREE DEVOTIONAL: BEING PRESENT TO YOUR CHILDREN
The flow of love is caught more than taught. When parents are fully present to their children in love, their children have the felt sense of being loved; they “catch” love from their parents.
There is a line in a poem by Raymond Carver that speaks to the hope every parent has for their children. It says,
“And did you get what you wanted from this life?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved,
to feel myself beloved on the earth.”
Is there any greater gift you can give to your children? Is there anything you want more for your children than for them to know they are unconditionally loved by you and for them to feel that love deeply in their bones?
Here is a very practical way for you to think about loving your children.
It’s called “HOLD” ing your children.
We want to hold our children in such a way that we don’t hold them too tight and they feel strangled or suffocated but we don’t want to hold them so loosely that they feel abandoned and we drop them.
So how do we “HOLD” our children in a way that feels just right?
H stands for Honor. We want to honor our children as sacred individual people who belong to God. When we look at our children we are seeing someone who is made in the image of God. This means respecting their individuality and their right to grow and develop into their own self. What we strive for is allowing them to be their own person while also maintaining connection with them so they feel safe and supported as they grow and develop. This is how we honor them.
O stands for Open. First we want to open up our hearts to God’s love. As we rest secure in God’s love, it places us in a position to be open to our children where we can receive and accept them just as they are, giving them that felt sense of safety and connection which is essential for their growth and development.
L stands for Listen. Listen to your child’s heart. Listen to their needs and desires.
Because one of the deepest longings of the human heart is to be truly seen, one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is seeing and listening to them, accepting them and loving them as they are. We do this by listening to their heart. Rather than fixating on just their behavior, we can be curious and listen for the unspoken needs and desires that are underneath their behavior. When we seek to understand what a child feels and validate their experience, we give them the felt sense of being seen. Our children then come to establish a sturdy and solid sense of self.
D stands for Delight. Delight in your children.
Children are constantly monitoring their parent’s faces to see what their parents see when you are seeing them. What do your children see when they see you seeing them? There’s no such thing as “perfect parenting.” We all make mistakes. There will be times when our children see our disappointment and frustration and we can talk to them about that. But hopefully there are also times when they see us seeing them and they see the delight and joy that we have simply in being with them. Do they see that glimmer and delight that communicates to them, “I am special and I am valued simply because I exist?” It communicates to children that they are loved just the way they are!
Being present to our children means “HOLD” ing them in such a way that they feel safe and supported into becoming the person God created them to be. Through our attuned presence, they sense and feel God loving them.
DAY FOUR DEVOTIONAL: BEING PRESENT TO YOUR PARTNER
One of the primary jobs of parents is creating an environment that is conducive for growth. The way in which parents are present to one another becomes the air the rest of the family breathes in. The question then becomes what is the quality of the air? Is it fresh? Stale? Polluted? Toxic?
There are at least two cries of every human heart. The first can be summarized as “Who am I?” It is a question about identity or authenticity and what us therapists call differentiation. The second cry of every heart is for connection. Here we are asking, “Do you love me? or “Can I trust you?”
All healthy relationships hold these two fundamental desires or needs in tension. Let go of your authenticity and you lose yourself. Let go of connection and you end up isolated and lonely.
Maintaining our own authenticity while staying connected to others requires us to develop the skill of thinking relationally. Relational thinking requires us to move beyond simplistic either/or dualistic thinking to thinking dialectically where we can hold in tension two different views. This dialectical, paradoxical way of seeing the world is bound up in the great mystery of Jesus Christ who is BOTH fully God AND fully human.
The Sufi poet Rumi has a great line that often comes to mind in doing counseling with couples. He writes, “Beyond the idea of right thinking and wrong thinking, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” This relational way of thinking is an essential skill that we must develop if we want to stay truly present to ourselves and to our partner.
Here’s something to try: Next time you have a disagreement with your partner (or any other person for that matter), notice if you are arguing over who is right and who is wrong. Instead of seeking to be right, see if you can move beyond that and think relationally. See if you can hold in your mind your partner’s perspective without losing your own. If you are able to hold together both perspectives in your heart and mind, it will transform your relationship and your entire family will benefit from breathing in the fresh clean air.
DAY FIVE DEVOTIONAL: BEING PRESENT TO THE HERE & NOW
Thanks so much for joining us in this short series on Presence. In the beginning, we reflected on Exodus 3 where God said, “I AM WHO I AM.” God places God’s self in the present. We do not experience God in the past. We do not experience God in the future. God exists in the present, in the here and now. God is Presence. To experience God is to bring our full attention and awareness into the present moment.
We are often nagged by regrets from the past or worried about the future. But God is located in the “present moment.” One pathway to being more grounded and more present in the moment is through embodiment, which is a focus on being connected and attuned to your body and senses. When God wanted to reveal Godself, God did so by taking on a human body. God reveals Godself to us through embodiment. Thankfully we are hearing more and more about embodiment these days, which is a huge correction to the overemphasis of rationalism that happened during the Enlightenment.
One way we can practice being more present to God, especially when our worried mind seems to be taking charge, is to slow down and draw our attention to our bodies. Practicing embodiment draws attention to our own breath.
Right now, try a short breathing exercise:
Breathe in through your nose for the count of four.
Then hold that for the count of four.
Now breathe out for the count of four.
Continue that for as long as you would like. While doing that, breathe in the very Presence of God. God’s Presence flowing through you and breathing out God’s Presence into the world. As you become more aware of your own body and God being Present with you and for you. May your heart cry out with the Psalmist,
“Lord, you have shown me the way of life,
granting me the joy of your Presence,
and the pleasure of living with you forever.”
