I’ve been focusing a great deal on God’s Love lately. If God really does love us the way the Course says He does, then that really does change everything. It changes every moment of every day from now till forever. Along these lines, an image has been coming to my mind for the last few days that just crystallized about an hour ago. It started as more of a feeling but finally became a more concrete image.
The feeling was that if God really does love me like a doting parent, then there is a lot of room for me to make mistakes. There is a grace that covers all of my screw-ups. There is room for the messiness of my typical actions and choices. As I stayed with that feeling, I began to feel a sense of God being behind me as I ventured out into my day. It had a kind of “backstop” feeling (Helen even said that Jesus will “backstop” for us when we are unable to cancel out certain past mistakes).
Finally, I realized the image that was at the heart of these more vague feelings. It was of a child walking forward, doing something new, something the child was uncertain of or unsteady with. Perhaps the child has just learned to walk and is walking through uneven terrain. And the parent is behind the child in order to protect the child against his own mistakes. Indeed, it’s assumed that the child will make a lot of mistakes. That’s simply part of the territory. The parent is also there to protect the child against unexpected circumstances, like another child coming along and running into the first child. All in all, the parent is there because he or she has a massive, prior investment in the child’s welfare, safety, and success. That investment is not something the child has to earn (in a healthy household, at least). He already has it simply by virtue of being the child.
Anyway, that is the image that has been coming to my mind. God is behind me, with a massive prior investment in my welfare, safety, and success, assuming that I will make lots of mistakes, and that’s OK, it’s part of the process. He is there as my backstop, my safety net, my loving, attentive parent. He is already on my side, not because I did anything right, but because I am His child. He is behind me in the fullest sense of the word–not just shadowing me, but behind me in the sense of rooting for me, pulling for me.
It’s a feeling I could get used to. Normally, I feel that there is no room for me to make mistakes, even though I make a boatload of them. And that means there is no room for me to be me (at least the me I appear to be in this dream). It’s like I am working within very narrow tolerance zones, too narrow for me to stay within. Therefore, I keep hitting the sides and causing the red light and buzzer to go off. If I did it all right, I could have God totally on my side, with me. But then, I can’t do it all right.
But if God is like a loving parent, then I’ve had it all wrong. I can relax. He’s already on my side. He’s totally behind me. And in His Love, there is ample room for any mistake I could possibly make. There is ample room for me not doing it all right. There is room for all the uncertainty and messiness of my life.
