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Fiction Inspirational

Do you remember that story in the Bible where Jesus is getting baptized and the sky opens, a dove descends, and the voice says, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”?  

Don’t you wish everyone, I mean everyone, would get to experience that? It would, of course, once and for all quell that nagging voice inside that says: “I’m not good enough, no one cares, I messed up again.” Ever wonder what else it might do?  

Well it happened to me. Really, it did. I Was lying in bed. So, you can call it a dream. And if you have a very small mind, you can use the word dream to diminish its power, but for me if it was a dream that makes it all the more true. Still, I can’t quite call it a dream. 

Ok, so, like I said: I was lying in bed when all of a sudden I was lying in a sweet smelling field of wild flowers and brilliantly green grass, looking up at the clouds. Then there she was, filling the whole sky with her golden and rose colored robes of light. She had a crystal bowl and was pouring out of it pure love. It is hard to describe. It was definitely something pouring out of that crystal clear bowl. I could see it though it had no color and that love poured out all over me! Really, it poured right through me: filling every cell, every thought, every feeling with such a complete knowing that I am loved. 

This clearly was NOT- I will be loved if I am better, or perfect, or do something big and important. It was NOT - I will be loved if I save the whales or stop fossil fuels or if I sacrifice all my hopes and dreams for someone else’s hopes and dreams. It was NOT -I will be loved if I stop the war or solve the problem of homelessness…. I guess you can see what my mind had been busy telling me for most of my life. 

This elegant and exquisite being of pure light was pouring love into ME just because I am me. I felt my whole body filling and filling up with so much love and light I half expected to look down and see I was floating. I wasn’t. I was still lying in this lovely field of flowers. The smell of the flowers and the smell of love was pretty much the same thing. 

All of a sudden I felt her ever so close, like the wind itself was HER brushing me and she whispered in my ear: “You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.”  

Clearly she wasn’t pleased because I had done anything she was pleased about. I knew for sure I could have been an addict, a thief, or even a murderer and she would have still poured all that love into me and whispered the very same message.  

My eyes closed and I let myself bask in this wonder. When I opened my eyes I was looking from above down at Earth. I was looking through her eyes and feeling her feelings which means that out of MY eyes now, love was pouring out on the entire world. Everything I saw, I loved. Blades of grass, rocks, and OHHHH, the water! I saw the addicts and murderers and the president that until this moment I would have said, I hated. But all I could feel was love for all of them, including him. Love for the Earth. I felt so grateful to get to be a part of this magnificent planet.  

WOW. How could this be true when all my life I had thought everything was exactly the opposite? But my body was so filled with love there wasn’t even a speck of room in me for doubt. I could feel everything in me rearrange: every cell, every belief, every feeling. Seemed my entire body had been completely dismantled and put back together in a totally new way. A way that expressed nothing but love.  

I closed my eyes taking in a deep breath of gratitude. When I opened them again this time, I was back in my bed. I wasn’t even sad that it was over. I just felt love for my bed and drifted off to peaceful sleep.

The light outside resonated with the light that now filled my body and so, I woke up. Maybe that what always makes us wake up. But now I could feel it. I felt joy, peace, curiosity and, of course, Love as I rose and dressed and headed out into my day. I didn’t really do anything different. Nothing was different but EVERYTHING was different: I was in love.  

If you have ever fallen in love, doesn’t everything all of a sudden look more beautiful, the sky is clearer, the colors are brighter? Then, I think you know a hint of the feeling. Only now I was really truly in love with EVERYTHING and EVERYONE!  

The really cool thing is, it turns out, everyone loves to be loved (who knew-why hadn’t I thought of that before?). A crusty old neighbor who had never once been friendly, paused and showed me with pride, his garden. Of course, I love my kids but even they could tell that this love was different and they just folded right in to loving me back so sweetly.  

At work, the contentious coworkers became kind and cooperative. Traffic jams became an opportunity to pour love into all the cars around me, and frustrated faces began to smile. Go ahead, you can think I am imagining this. Actually, I wondered many times if I was. But it has been years now. It has never faded. I still look at the world through Her eyes, falling in love anew every morning. And, I can’t even begin to tell you all the stories about the ways people have transformed before my eyes in response to being loved. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you blossom if the sky opened for you saying this is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased?  

I wish it could happen for everyone in the whole world, like it did for Jesus. Like it did for me. Most people are so filled with self doubt and self judgement, it might take, like it did for me, for the sky to open for us to believe we are loved and accepted as we are. But just in case not everyone gets to experience that, I guess it is up to me to help it along. I can’t open up the sky, But I can love. And I have found that everyone, and I mean everyone, responds to love.

Oh, falling in love is so fun and simple really. 

Go ahead, try it.  

January 10, 2025 17:10

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