Dear Friends,
I am writing this letter at the beginning of January. After living up North for the first 50 years of my life there are some things which are not hard to get over. Winter is one of them. The beginning of January up there meant the Holidays were over and now there wasn’t anything to break the long days of Winter until Easter, which sometimes coincided with Spring and sometimes didn’t. The first few months of the new year could truly drag on. Unlike here in the South, where the sun shines for a lot of the time and you can get out whenever you like, up north I knew I would be trapped in the house or the office. I am a nature person and love to be outside, so this was hard on my spirit. Well as I write these words there is a part of me which still thinks winter will be like it was for the first 50 years of my life. God reminds me this is not true!
No matter where we live the month of February has the wonderful Day of Valentine. It is a day to reflect on the gift of love. Some of us have grown up in homes, churches and jobs where we felt love. Others of us have not and would have a hard time relating to a gift like that. Yet even for those of us who have known love it is never perfect, for Perfect Love is found only in God. The point of my thoughts is to encourage each of us to reflect on that which blocks us from love or a life well lived. Could it be the ideas we hang onto - like my thoughts about Winter even though now I am blessed with a Southern Winter? Could it be things or ideas we were taught which said we didn’t deserve love? Could it even be the idea of a God who is NOT an Unconditional Lover? On those days when it is cloudy or cool, on those days when we are stuck inside, on those days when we are not blessed with a Southern Winter why not give yourself a Valentine present? Spend some time reflecting on what stops us from feeling the ongoing gift of God’s Love.
I have found there are so many thoughts and ideas which are on our minds which we don’t pay attention to in any way. I have also discovered there are patterns of thoughts of which we also are unaware. Lastly, I know we often treat ourselves in ways we wouldn’t dare treat others. We wouldn’t say you are so stupid, or when I look at you in the mirror I get sick, or won’t you ever get it right, or they must have thought you were an idiot when you said that and on and on. Why don’t we see we don’t want those thoughts to continue. I keep learning the importance of paying attention to what is happening in my mind. So much of what happens in my everyday life begins and ends with my thoughts. I am like others – human- and face what most others face. so I invite you to join me in loving ourselves by giving our heart the Valentine gift of getting to know who we are – Very Good. As we do we may find a God already there who says, “At last! Now I can love you.”
Winter is the season where we lie fallow so God can plant the seeds of self love. By getting to know ourselves as God does those seeds will be planted in the kind of envionment which will transform our lives.
Happy Valentine’s Day,
Gary