When God Comes To Get You
“It is always shocking to meet life where we thought we were alone. “Look out!” we cry, “it’s alive.” And therefore this is the very point at which so many draw back—I would have done so myself if I could—and proceed no further with Christianity. An “impersonal God”—well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads—better still. A formless life- force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap—best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband—that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (“Man’s search for God”!) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us!”
Although I have been dropping hints here and there, I have an admission to make.
This is no easy admission. If you had told my teenage self or my 25 year old self or even my 35 year old self I would be where I find myself today, I would have said, no way.
But here I am.
I have found God.
Rather, he has found me.
I’ve always believed in a higher power. I’ve been conversing with energetic life forms since I was a little girl.
But I’ve skirted God, himself, for forever. Almost afraid that if I went straight to him, that something unfavourable would happen; like the boom would come down.
It’s so funny to me when I think about that now.
In the past, I would be more apt to dig into my tarot cards than pray to a personal God.
And yet, I realize now that I’ve been ‘hunted’ for quite some time.
About 16 years ago, I was in Phoenix, Arizona for a long weekend. I was attending a spiritual retreat with some friends and we were in the final hours of the weekend. We were culminating with a group meditation. There were probably 100 or more of us in a large room.
Just before the meditation began, I had the unmistakable nudge to go and lie down. I don’t meditate lying down, but this day, I did.
I went and found a quiet part of the room and I laid down. I couldn’t tell you where or even how the meditation began because almost as soon as I laid down, I was gone.
My entire body began to shake, uncontrollably. I was watching myself as this happened and noted, in the moment, that if someone was looking at me lying there, they would think that, surely, I was having a seizure.
Just as my body calmed down, tears began to run down my cheeks but with no experience of ‘crying.’ And then my mouth opened…I was aware that my body was feeling a sense of awe without knowing why or what for.
And then I saw it.
A swirling mass of light, in otherwise total darkness. And a silence that was absolutely deafening.
And there I was, suspended before God.
It was unmistakable.
When God wants your attention, he gets it.
My body knew before I did what was happening. That was the shaking, the tears, the open mouth in a state of utter awe.
I was in direct communion with God.
Suspended there, in the most overwhelming silence I have ever experienced, I was asked a question. The question was: Are you ready?
My answer was immediate.
No.
And without even a shred of a doubt, I knew that whether I answered yes or no was completely irrelevant.
To say I felt awed, overwhelmed, HELD…is so ridiculously understated.
That was the first time God came to get me.
In recent years, I have fancied myself far too intellectual and even arrogant to relate to or invite in a personal God. Instead, I’ve used terminology like, “The Universe”, and “Consciousness”, and “Non-Duality.”
Of course none of these are wrong. But they’ve been a means of avoidance. They’ve been a scapegoat to avoid the one God from which all of this has sprung forth.
In a nutshell, I’ve been terrified, without really knowing why.
But we seem to be living through a Sacred Revival of sorts right now.
It seems as if our secular lives could only exist in a vacuum for so long.
Aristotle famously said, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Spiritually speaking, this means that it is unnatural for us not to be filled with something.
We are all wired for worship.
What we worship will change along the way. But we know there is the penultimate of what we can worship.
If it’s money, you will be forever wanting. If it’s a person, you will be forever disappointed. If it’s a lower god, you will be forever searching.
I will take a leap here and say that you will find God when he finds you first.
What you think you are looking for, is actually looking for you.
The seeker is the sought.
If this feels at all resonant to you…even if it makes you squirm a little bit (perhaps, especially if it makes you squirm a little bit!), please stick around.
I do not fancy myself special. If anything, I feel like I’m late to the table.
But I have to say, I’ve never felt more alive, more guided, more loved, more okay.
Freedom, it seems, requires goal posts. How strange.
How ironic.
But mostly, it requires connection.
And not just any connection.
None of this is rational and yet here we are at this moment in time when we can turn back around towards that which we’ve been running like hell from our entire lives.
It is a ‘need to know as you go’ kind of commitment.
It is the ultimate Surrendered path.
I have spoken so much about Surrender in the past. I’m finally experiencing, firsthand, what that actually means.
A life given over, is a life totally held.
To finally let the driver of the car, drive.
Stay tuned….