I don’t want to be too deep that we don’t get it. Neither do I want to be so shallow that we miss it. Take note: There is a false sense of safety dwelling in the shallow that blurs the securities of the deep. That may make sense by the end of this blog. There is this divine balance that I am shooting for. It is that spot like when we are in a pool and we are standing at the edge of a number on the side of the pool. We are at the point where our feet or toes at times still comfortably touch the bottom. Further up the sideline of the pool, we see the next number that will confirm or deny the reality of our height.
I am 5 feet and 8.5 inches and I can swim. However, I am still conscious and remain aware of where I am in this arena of changing depths called life. Oh yeah, right, I mean pool.
Because I don’t want to be caught off guard and reach my foot or even tippy toe for the bottom and not feel it. Even as a swimmer that can be an un- welcomed and scary feeling when not expected.
Why am I talking about the pool in the heart of winter? Maybe it helps me to mentally go out of the reality of my present 23-degree temperature here where I live. Let’s keep going. Now, when in the pool, I am comfortable with going into the deep because I have reminded myself that I can swim. Why remind? Because every time I am in the pool I don’t always swim. Oftentimes, I am there to enjoy the arena that allows me to feel weightlessness – if only temporary. It is hard for me to think about all the things of life when I am ingulfed in the liquid luxury that allows me to just float, breath and not share my thoughts with what's for dinner.
Stay with me I am going somewhere. I just feel the need to go from shallow and progress us to the deep rather than do a belly buster right into the deep.
There are times when I just don’t feel like exerting the energy that it takes to propel my limbs with enough consistent force to keep my body on top of the water so I avoid the deep altogether. There are other times when I feel the need to test the thing that allows me to defy low energy and I just swim into the deep long before my height is compromised.
There are other times when I am comfortable in the shallow and have no desire to look, go into, or even acknowledge the deep. With eyes closed, (when I have no small non-swimmers with no knowledge of the depth and the consequences of water versus the breath of life intake called grandkids with me)
I prop my head onto my arms on the side of the pool and let the water and my lower body become one in a swallow of motions that alter between paddling and relaxing.
So now that we have had a pool experience of shallow and deep – it's about time that we have that conversation with ourselves. Come on out! This conversation happens it the deep. If you were a part of our last zoom, you may remember when Todah shared that we are a three-part being – body, soul, and spirit. You are a spirit, you live in a body and you have a soul. Think of it like this. Your body is like the pool itself that holds the water. This is our physical part. You have a spirit that is like the water in the pool. The water in the pool is wet and that is like your soul.
Ok. Our soul is where our emotions, will, intellect, and reasoning resides - the wet. Our spirit is what we truly are and connects us to God. Ok, let's talk about this conversation we need to have with ourselves. This conversation takes place between the focused you (spirit) and the unfocused you (soul). Your spirit is continually yearning and desiring to be continually connected to God and go be the best that God desires it to be.
Your soul cannot seem to get its emotions, desires, reasoning, morals or character in check. The spirit is willing to do what is challenging but necessary to have wellbeing in every area of life – spirit, soul, body, financially, and social. This conversation (it's coming) with our true self, our spirit (that happens between the soul and the spirit) needs to set the record straight and put some ropes in the pool to designate some lanes (priorities).
When you get in a pool that has ropes, there are designation lanes that run horizontal so that you don’t just jump in and start swimming side to side. If we do, we are going to be struggling through ropes.
Nevertheless, this is where some of us just let our flesh jump into life and eat whatever it wants to eat, drink whatever it wants to drink, say whatever it wants to say, believe whatever it wants to believe, walk whatever way it wants to walk, dress whatever way it wants to dress, hang with whoever it wants to hang with, go wherever it wants to go, sleep with whoever it wants to sleep with and be whatever it wants to be and buy whatever it wants to buy and think whatever it wants to think. Just dragging the spirit along as if it was not the true identity of why and who we are. And lets not forget the body who displays, is seen or is filled with all of the choices- good or bad.
Our spirit is our true identity. It desires to go where God is working and invites it to become involved. It desires to invest its time in the lives where God is working. It desires to provide the body healthy life-giving intakes, to dress in a way that speaks of purpose, to speak with a voice that resonates like kingdom purpose, to go where kingdom impact is needed, to hang out with those that are divinely connected and not socially elite, to pursue well-being and not well enough, to drink what is life-giving and not thirst-quenching.
Ok, so see we just gently swam into the deep. Where our spirit man speaks with the soulish man and says this:
"You will no longer have me going to places that cheapen and defile my purpose. You will no longer drag me into conversations that are debunked of the power of purposeful language. You will no longer take me into the company of people that compromise my voice of purpose. No longer will you put me into clothing that covers my purposed frame of living and exposes the silhouette of what should be hidden. You will no longer compromise my purity by laying me down beneath a man that is not my God ordained husband. You will no longer stuff me with things that clog me up, slow me down and increase my physical capacity. You will no longer improvise my purpose for the pursuit of worldly pleasures. You will no longer speak things that are in direct assault of the promises of my purpose. It ends today. It ends now! No more "endorphinistic decisions" (Greta Be's word meaning - a heightened level of pleasure or excitement that clouds judgment and blurs your focus of purpose).
And then you turn and dog-paddle (a simple swimming style) away gracefully. Sometimes when you are in the deep and you don’t know how to swim, dog-paddling can be just as effective. I permit you to have that conversation with yourself. Go ahead! Tell your soul what the rest of your spiritual walk is going to live like and look like. Put some ropes in your pool of purpose and do not allow any more freestyle swimming. Your body is caught in the middle and it feels something like this:
My point exactly!
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