Resonance
Resonance. Fullness. Vibration. Vibrancy. Consonance. Sonorous(deep and full). A deep, rich reflection of who we are. It resonates with who we are. It calls out from a deep place. It’s an inner bell that rings out our own song. Soul. Spirit. Essence. Resonance is the one word that for me captures what happens when God speaks within me. There is a deep resounding within me that knows God’s voice. That’s my experience of it.
The voice speaks, it seems always, the next best step for me to take. Sometimes that next possible step leaves me breathless, would take me beyond my own limits. I’ve come to know that anything that leaves me breathless is a sure sign of the Holy Spirit. I’ve also learned that it’s not saying I have a chasm to leap across(my first reaction), but more like an extended step, just beyond where I would have naturally placed my foot. And so I do what is suggested and it works out for me. Ahhhh….
I can reel at the thought of obedience, become a mule, but God has never said to me, “You have to do this!” what has come to me is an offering, more on the order of “Try this.” For a long time I thought God offered me a choice of this or that, but I’ve come to realize that it’s more this sense of offering, but not in any way forced. “Choose this,” might be the message. Or this morning, it was the word “resonance” that dropped into my mind and I thought, “Yes, that would complete the thought I was writing about in last week’s blog.” So here I am writing about resonance.
At first I am sure I had a lot of resistance, but there was also a curiosity, a need to know myself more deeply, to find out who the “I” that I am is. Since I’ve been listening to God for thirty years, I realize what a slow learner I am, how long it has taken me to take to heart all that God has taught me about who I was designed to be. In spite of that denseness it wasn’t very long before I was hooked on this “still, small voice,” because of its resonance within and because of the growth it offered me, the stuff in me that got healed, the shape of the “I” within it revealed. As I practiced saying “yes” to all the offerings, in small things and large, I began to see that I was taking all the offerings as they were given to me. And when the tsunami in my life came and I saw the help that was offered to me, I said, “Yes,” then, too.
Offering. Resonance. These two words say more about love than anything else I’ve experienced. In stark contrast to my hell-fire-and-damnation church upbringing, my experience of God has been so positive, so allowing of who I am, so uniquely honed in on my skills and talents and challenges, so loving and forgiving—always. How could I not fall deeply in love with the Someone who is so clearly on my side and wants the very best for me?
Looking back on thirty years in the hands of God, there have been suggestions of books to read, people to contact, programs to offer, studies to complete, moves to make, challenges to embrace, grief to be borne and expressed, and a steady stream of encouragement to just be me, shorn of all the normal stuff of a life in the 20th and 21st centuries—anxiety, fear, busyness, and control. Without these burdens there is a deep sense of peace, love for myself—the whole of who I am, a wonderful knowing that God is clearly in charge of my life and that I can trust whatever happens as intended to be. I can rest in the love of God and be loving towards others. I don’t in any way suggest that I am a perfect human being, but I can embrace all my faults as well as my good qualities and let them be. I can work through any resistance I have to anything in my life, because I am so very aware when I am resistant and when I am saying, “Yes!” I am not trying to arrive at some perfection, only trying to always put God’s will first, above my own—a life’s work.