A Labyrinthine Journey: Soon Coming in 3-D

An excerpt from my Soul Writing from a few days ago.

Dear God,

Thank you for inviting me into your abundant life. I don’t always hear the invitation clearly, yet you keep on knocking on my heart’s door and calling my name. Sometimes I do hear it but I turn away from it. I don’t know why. Those seem to be the times when I think the little I have is all I deserve. The shadow voices convince me for the moment that I am only worth the lesser portion. You have to admit it, this life you invite me to is pretty amazing. It does go far beyond imagination.

Sorry, but I live among a people who are used to dreams dying. I’ve been a Chicago Cubs fan. It is very common and almost normal for us to find disappointment and to live discouraged.

I get so excited about some dream idea and then it doesn’t come. That excitement turns to grief and pain. Or maybe I get what I want, but it doesn’t live up to those hopes. What’s left is emptiness and even resentment. Or sometimes I will have fun starting to follow a wonderful dream, but then it gets hard or it changes too much from what I thought it would be. I give up.

I become disheartened.

That’s a good word for it: disheartened. With time and the accumulation of more disappointments I have learned to protect my heart. A few times in I can actually picture my heart encased in a hard shell. I stop getting excited about things. I learn the cynical path is the easiest one to take. I stop imagining things. I settle.

I settle for the lesser life.

I can tell when I am in that settling place by the echo of my heart. I read, hear, and even write or preach your words of hope and love, and inside I hear those words echo in emptied spaces. The shadowed chambers of my soul ring the deep notes of that disappointment. My hearts feels the pre-creation void as an echo of that old shadow. And those days feel so small.

I wonder though, why would You torture me with this vision of abundant life if you had no intention of truly providing it for me. You wouldn’t do that would you? That wouldn’t be fun or fair. It would be so much easier to just stop dreaming, to accept that this vision of abundance is just illusion and that this little life is all I will ever get. The dying inside will hurt some at first, but then after a while I won’t know or care anymore. have accepted my small life while still yearning for abundance.

I think of my Grandmother. As her dementia began she was terrified. She had watched her Mother disappear before her eyes and recognized within herself the same progression. Then she reached that part of the disease where she forgot and was no longer afraid. Her world had grown small enough that she again felt safe.

Is that what is available? Spiritual dementia? Accepting the lesser “vision?”

If that is all you are ever going to give me, then in your kindness and grace take these extravagant dreams away from me.

However, you still invite me to this abundant life.

I will not accept the shadow idea that you are cruel and arbitrary. I will not accept the idea that you would offer us only empty promises. If you invite us to live your abundance, I will trust that you will make it real.

Strengthen me when the siren song pulls me toward the rocks of Less. Carry me through the times of transition and transformation to the place of grace.

God, help me to always remain open to your invitational knock. Don’t let me slip into my little world where your dreams are all dead. Resurrect my soul, illumine my heart, and free me for your life abundant.