"the reason..."

"He put that hunger in your heart,
He put that fire in your soul;

His love is the reason...”

Just when I think I will have to write these posts - without new songs as keynotes - Love pours out a fathomless blessing. Today's song is from the group Unspoken. I love their video for  "Reason."  And if I see a big handful of balloons in the sky -- I hope you will be holding them!

I was never a particularly athletic or adventurous girl, teen, woman.  I did not dream of climbing mountains, winning competitions, or swimming the English channel. 

I wanted to be a good girl, read through the fiction section of every school and community library, write a book, learn a musical instrument, marry a nice man, and have children.  

I was a good girl.  In hindsight, I am most grateful to have known myself through the lens of that desire.  

But why didn't I want more. I don't know.  It was just what I desired.  For many years I thought I was somehow stunted in an area of life that my friends and siblings shared -- a desire for adventure, travel, sports.  

I worried that I was a bookworm, a slacker, someone most at home and happy in small, dark, quiet spaces.  I gravitated towards libraries, out-of-the-way coffeehouses, and closets -- yes, literally closets.

I tried.  I tried to want to play outside, join a team, go on an adventure -- but I was always eager for the game, competition, expedition, adventure, vacation to be over. 

For a while I let myself be called an "introvert" -- but somehow that felt off - untrue.  I wasn't a kind of a person.  I was just me.  

That was when I started to listen for spiritual inspiration, and it came in two sentences from the very first page of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy:

"Desire is prayer
and no loss can occur
from trusting God with our desires
that they may be molded and exalted
before they take for in words and in deeds.

Prayer is God's gracious means
for accomplishing whatever has been
successfully done for the Christianization
and health of mankind. "

It suddenly occurred to me that if desire was prayer, and prayer was God's gracious means, that my desires were not mine at all -- they were God's means for moving my heart in the direction of His purpose for me. He way of blessing the world - and He would fulfill it.

As the song says:

"What He started in you,
He's gonna finish..."

He doesn't put that desire there and expect us to make it happen. Or as my friend Mike shared from Francis Thurber Seal's biography, Christian Science in Germany:

"God sent me on a mission,
He's certainly not going to
drown me on the way."

Eddy assures us in the last portion of her "Daily Prayer," from The Manual of the Mother Church:

"Thy kingdom come,
let the reign of divine Truth,
Life, and Love be established in me,
and rule out of me all sin,
and may Thy Word,
enrich the affections of all mankind,
and govern them."

It was God's Word that was enriching my affections - my desires - for quietude, stillness, goodness, beauty, family, harmony. It was not my personal desire. I have no personal desire. When I fully yielded to this truth of truths, I started to love my life. I was not an introvert, I was just me. Uniquely suited to God's placement of my gifts in the completeness of creation. I was not a kind of person. I was all that God was -- He was drawing forth from His Allness what he needed me to desire every moment.

I was not some lesser version of man/woman -- one that didn't want to go hiking or swimming or climb the Himalayas, or pay soccer, or run a marathon, I was completely capable of doing all those things as the full expression of divine Being -- but God was not enriching my affections for those things. He was causing me to desire a life of contemplation, stillness and service to others. Elsewhere in Science and Health, Eddy writes:

"Unfathomable Mind is expressed.
The depth, breadth, height, might,
majesty, and glory of infinite Love
fill all space.

That is enough!"

I am enough. You are enough. We each include the depth, breadth, height, might, majesty and glory of infinite Love -- and from this enough-ness, God calls us into His desire for us -- in order to fulfill His purpose in the larger scheme of things.

I may not be interested in sky diving, but I love reaching the heights of Mind to soar o'er time and space. I may not want to raft a river running at 4,000 cubic feet per second, but I wake up each morning excited to explore every channel of thought I find. I may not have any desire to see the seven wonders of the world or eat in a cafe in Portugal, but the seven synonyms of God still stun me with their beauty and I am deeply satisfied with the bread of Life.

I am not an introvert, I am not a less social, less adventurous, less competitive version of man.  I am not less of anything. I am the full expression of all He has enriched my affections for. I am His. He is at the root of all my desires. And it is enough.

offered with Love,

Cate