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How Will I Know?

Posted on September 14, 2022

How Will I Know You?

I will know you by your song
Rather than your voice,
And I will know you by your smile
Rather than your face.
I will look at you and see the strength 
I have never seen before,
And I will see the sensitivity that
Will be a partner to that strength.
And I will become encircled in your glow
And thus will we walk together always.

I cannot say
What you will say.
But when you say it
I will know you.
And my response will be such 
That there will be no doubt 
That this is the sign
We have waited for.
And you will know me,
As the message will rise into the heavens
And permeate the Earth around us.

And I will look at you
And not see the shadow
But the substance.
And you will look at me
And see beyond the cover to the content.
And we will see glorious things 
That no one else has ever seen before,
But have always been there unnoticed.
And we will see glorious things
That have not been there before,
But will now be there. 
Because we will see them
In each other and make them so.

We will forget
All those who knew us falsely,
All those who knew us partially,
For they did not know us at all.
And we will not focus on one thing,
Giving or not giving approval
On the basis of a part
As others have wrongly done.
But we will see a totality, 
The good and the bad,
Accepting it all with joy. 
And thus will we say I-Thou
For the first time.

You will know me as I really am
And I will know you truly,
Not even as we know ourselves
And would present ourselves, 
But to the very core of our beings.
And we will see the good and bad,
Accepting all with joy,
And from that time on
Our souls will be locked in harmony.
I will become you,
You will become me,
And we call each other
Love.               

By Meryl Fishman

Greetings!

My husband & I just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary in May of this year, although we have been together for several years longer than that. We knew of each other in High School but did not date. In fact, if someone had pointed him out to me then & said, “There is your future husband!” I would have laughed because he had the wildest, curly red hair. I did have a premonition once however, while dating my high school sweetheart, that my husband would have curly hair. (My high school sweetheart had very straight hair.) This was as close as I ever got to intuiting who he might be while I was in high school. 

We met again in college Freshman year, when we had a class together but both of us were still dating others so we only talked. But the following fall, fate stepped in & we met in the doorway of a fraternity having a party. We immediately set a date for a date as both of us were free. It would be 4 & 1/2 years before we married.  

So as I said, we’ve been together for awhile but it’s gone by so fast. He has changed, I have changed but fortunately for us, we have changed together & have given each other the space & permission to change. I think this is the trick. Not to hold so tightly to what has been but to allow for growth & change. This isn’t always easy. Change can be frightening & feel unpredictable. It’s like stepping off a cliff, not knowing what if anything will be there under your foot. It requires trust, faith, hope, love & acceptance in yourself, the process & your partner. It requires that you let go of what has been & what could have been in the old paradigm. You have to trust that what you are letting go of no longer serves you both. You have to trust that what you are stepping into is best & will serve you both eventually, whether you can see that right away or not. 

There were many times when the changes in our lives did not seem good in the moment. In looking back now, I can see that they served a divine purpose & they were best. I fought against some of those changes or my husband did but all of them turned into good for us eventually. If you have the patience to wait it out, good comes out of everything.  

While writing the vows for our wedding, I found the above poem & read it out loud during the ceremony. I’m not sure anyone could hear it though, through my tears & sobbing. The poem was so meaningful for me because I could feel the truth of it. We also played “our song” which was “Longer” by Dan Fogelberg. The first time I heard this song on the radio, I was at work at a part time job during college. I told my best friend, there and then, that this song was going to be in my wedding. I didn’t even know at the time who I was going to marry but I knew that this was “our” song.  

Longer

Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean
Higher than any bird ever flew
Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens
I've been in love with you

Stronger than any mountain cathedral
Truer than any tree ever grew
Deeper than any forest primeval
I am in love with you

I'll bring fire in the winters'
You'll send showers in the springs
We'll fly through the falls and summers 
With love on our wings

Through the years as the fire starts to mellow
Burning lines in the book of our lives
Though the binding cracks
And the pages start to yellow
I'll be in love with you
I'll be in love with you

Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean
Higher than any bird ever flew
Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens
I've been in love with you
I am in love with you                          

by Dan Fogelberg

I guess my point here is to trust what you know and let go of the rest. Trust that the rest will turn out in the best possible way for you & all concerned. That is the whole purpose for being here, I believe, is to manifest the best possible outcome for us all.

Love in the Light of God, Dawn 

Blog

Change

Posted on August 21, 2011

Greetings!

Change is difficult for many, which is ironic, since it has been said that the only constant in life is change.  By extension, if we can’t change & go with the flow of life easily & effortlessly then we are going to find life to be pretty darn difficult.  This is what I’ve seen in myself & in others.  Refusing to change & fighting change makes our lives more difficult & unhappy.  I’m pretty sure God’s path for us is meant to change us, to make us dig deep & reveal more of ourselves & our good, both to ourselves & to others.  Fighting change means fighting against our path & what God wants for us which in my book makes this a pretty futile fight, a banging-our-head-against-a-wall type of futile.  We will not come out ahead in this kind of fight.  I say pick your battles.  This would not be one to take a stand on.  🙂

My family has weathered a lot of changes, both large & small, just as many have & as a result have shown me both good & not so good ways to handle change.  For example, my grandparents who raised me.  My grandfather made a good living selling advertising & later had his own business selling insurance.  He used his money to buy farms & rental properties.  He did very well until the president or vice president, (I don’t remember which) of the Savings & Loan that his mortgages were with, ran off with the money.  I believe it was the FDIC that then stepped in & foreclosed on all the outstanding S&L mortgages that couldn’t be paid off in full.  My grandfather was denied loans by the few banks that he went to & long story short, he eventually lost everything except his home.  This was literally heartbreaking for my grandfather.  About 10 years into the long, slow, torturous loss of everything, he died of a heart attack.  Two things stood out for me from this:  First, he gave up on himself.  Second, he & my grandmother were unwilling to accept change.   

Several years into this process, a friend of my grandfather’s who was the president of a bank in a nearby town, heard what had happened & called him.  He asked, “Why didn’t you come to me?  I would have covered all your loans!”  Why did he not?  He gave up on himself.  When change happens, we assume that it’s bad.  That the change is coming against us or that we are being punished for some imagined, known or unknown past mistake or sin.  For my grandfather, it was a sign or proof of failure.  He was humiliated by it & felt he must deserve it & so he stopped asking for help, even from his friends. 

Lesson #1:  When faced with the prospect of overwhelming change, don’t give up on yourself.

My grandparents were unwilling to change.  They were probably quite set in their ways by this time as they were in their 60’s.  They had worked very hard all their life & everything they’d worked for was being taken away.  To save themselves, they needed to think outside the box, to be flexible & changeable.  Instead, they did everything they could to cling to what they’d had.  Clinging to what has been will not prevent or stop change.  They chose to file a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy thinking that this would give them time to bail themselves out which it could have if they’d used the time to sell off everything but they did not willingly sell or let go anything.  Any offer they received was met with the attitude that the potential buyer knew they were desperate & was trying to rob them blind.  If my memory serves me correctly, they lost all their properties one by one to the bank/government.  I’m not sure they managed to sell even one, but not for lack of offers. 

Lesson #2:  Learn to let go when it’s time to let go.

Like my grandparents, many today are being faced with the loss of their jobs, their lifestyle, their homes & possessions.  If this is you, don’t assume that the universe/God/others have it in for you, that you are a failure or that you are being punished.  Rather, assume that this is a learning, growing experience that will lead you into a better life.  Assume that God wants something better for you than what you think you had or have now.  As for my grandparents?  They had bitten off way more than they could chew & were incredibly stressed by it.  My grandmother had a stroke.  My grandfather had diabetes & associated complications.  They should have been retired or semi-retired but they could not afford to stop working.  From my perspective now, I would say that God was trying to save them from themselves & their possessions.  All that they owned was owning them – possessing & dictating their lives.  They were drowning in debt & in things, for while my grandfather was busy collecting properties, my grandmother was busy filling up their home with things she would then never let go.  My grandmother grew up in poverty & then she experienced the Great Depression which I think contributed to her hoarding things.  Our things are meant to serve us & not the other way around.  When our things no longer serve our highest good, we need to let them go or they may need to be taken from us.

I have gotten in the habit, from moving frequently early in my marriage, of annually going through everything I own & asking myself:  Does this still serve my highest good?  In other words, do I really need & want it?  Do I use it regularly?  Does it have a place in my home?  In my life?  Do I really love it?  Is it really important to me?  Can I afford it?  Is keeping it or maintaining it costing me more time, energy or money than it’s worth or that I can easily afford?  Anything I’m unsure of, I actually ask Spirit if it is time to let it go & I wait for an answer.  Yes, you will get an answer.  These are also good questions to ask yourself before you bring home anything else.  If, at any other time during the year, I begin to feel overwhelmed by my things then I take that as a sign it’s time to let something go.    

Now, it might seem that “don’t give up on yourself ” & “let go” are mutually exclusive.  Spirit would call this the dance of life.  The Gambler would say, know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em.  This would be the part of digging deep inside of yourself & discovering & revealing to yourself & others the good that you are really made of & that God wants for you.

May You Live, Love & Laugh in the Light of God, Dawn