If Your Heart Loves God

Walking along, seeing a gush of bouganvilla, my brain goes "Gee, that reminds me so much of Southern California." Watching a sudden burst of overwhelmingly torrential rain rush down from the sky I think, "Wow. This is so much like Florida rain storms."

Being buffeted around by waves on a windy day takes me back to summers at Pigeon Lake. I would wait breathlessly for stormy days, so that I could go into the water and experience with gleeful freedom the feeling of being thrown around by powerful gushes of water.

Stepping outside into damp - making mugginess, I am reminded of summers in Ontario with Grandma and Grandpa. The open air markets here remind me of the one in Campo de Fiori.

---------------------------------------------------------------

For so long I convinced my brain of the impossibility, the impracticality, perhaps the uselessness of seeing all the things I wanted to see; so it keeps telling that I am in SoCal, or Florida, or Alberta, or Southern Ontario, or back in Rome - which itself was so dreamlike, I still can't believe I lived there. To actually believe that I am in Greece is too unreal a thought.

The fulfillment of a dream can almost be too heavy a burden to carry. The weight of happiness becomes so heavy that the fear of being sent a bolt of lightening from a jealous God becomes ever present.

Oh, the twisted recesses of the mind.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

As far back as I can remember, my day dreams were filled with Parisian streets, and Roman courtyards, Pyramids and ancient ruins, lions leaping through Africa, and the smells and colors of India. But they were only day dreams, and none if it was practical in any sense, or perhaps even possible. I would push all my mind pictures away, write a paper, and my heart would ache a little in protest.

People don't fulfill their daydreams.

I mean, except for my friends who dreamed about being married....and are married.

Or my friends who longed for children....and now have them.

Or those who wanted be lawyers/doctors/nurses/ teachers....and now are those things.

--------------------------------------------------------------

My point: Perhaps, not always, but certainly sometimes, our daydreams - even if they seem impractical, or too big, or any other discouraging thing - are the whispers of God nudging us towards happiness. Perhaps in ignoring those whispers, and in saying that those dreams aren't good enough, or right enough, or even doable, we are slapping God in the face.

We are saying that who he created us to be, and the desires he placed on our hearts are silly. Maybe a mistake. At any rate, entirely ignorable. We are saying that the path he wants us to take is not possible. So we forge our own.

But those heart-throbs, those daydreams, might mean something.

Peter Kreeft says it best - as he often does:

"... surely it is God who designed our hearts – the spiritual heart with desire and will as much as the physical heart with aorta and valves ... So our hearts can be worth following too even though they are sinful and fallible. If your heart loves God, it is worth following. If it doesn't, then you're not interested in the problem of discernment of his will anyway." (read the whole thing here)

-----------------------------------------------------------

So maybe, just maybe, the fulfillment of that dream deep in your heart can also be the fulfillment of God's will. And maybe, just maybe, to be afraid of happiness is to be afraid of letting God love us.