Divine Today (Chapter from You Are God's Best Idea!)

You Are God’s Best Idea!: Great Acceptations and Living the Undeniable Life

“At the end of the day it doesn’t matter so much whether promises were kept to you; it’s whether you’ve honored your own.”

~Doug Daniels


“Every day is Christmas morning when we are open to the present possibilities.”

Do you wake up each day thrilled to be alive and ready to be your best? This day is just as important as yesterday was and tomorrow will be. Each day is full of promise and opportunity, but you must also appreciate the day itself: because, the day is Life. Love the days you’ve had. Love the days to come. But, most of all, Love this Day! It is the only one you’ve presently got. I Love Days!

“This is the greatest day for someone. That makes this a great day!”

So if every day is a great day, why not make it great for you, too? Every day we tip the dominoes of Life in positive or negative directions. Be a good tipper! What makes a great day anyway? In the early days of civilization, not being eaten by a Saber Tooth Tiger may have been considered a great day. In the desert, a day where it rains might be considered a great day. In a hospital, an additional day of life for a terminally ill friend might be a great day just as that same friend ending their suffering by transitioning could be perceived as a great day just as well.

I don’t believe a lost day is a lost opportunity because we have as many opportunities as we make and take. We do need to rest. I found that not writing for a few days gave me time to pause and reflect, bringing additional stories and additional clarity to these chapters, like what I am typing right now.

Now is all we have, and yet it is an eternal now. Not everything has to be done today. In some spiritual circles, the suggestion is we’re never done. In others, the suggestion is that there is nothing that necessarily needs to be done, but love. Don’t feel like you have to fill up the now. Enjoy it for what it is. If inspiration is pouring forth, let it flow. If it’s time to get a good night’s sleep, then let it rest. You are eternally Divine. This is not a use-it-or- lose-it proposition. However, the possibilities when you do use it, your Divinity, well, it’s Heaven at hand.

“Someday is an appointment never kept.”

Delete someday from your vocabulary. It is the bane of every lost expression of individual greatness. Someday means Delay. Delay is not one of the seven days of the week. Is this what you want to do? Delay the expression of your inherent Divinity? It is perfectly fine to rest. Resting is better than rushing. The idea is to express Divinity, not, rush Divinity. When things are rushed, it usually results in something less than Divine.

“Great Anticipations begin with Great Preparations!”

Every day is the day you’ve waited for if seeds were sown in preparation for its anticipation. If your days seem unfulfilled, it is because you failed to prepare for them. Every day is a day of harvest one way or the other.

What is great about the sowing of seeds is that from One seed, entire fields and forests emerge over time. Every action you take with intention and conviction causes a reverberation, ripples of positivity (or negativity). You don’t have to sow a million seeds to generate a million trees, or, a million dollars. Sow the expression of your Divinity and allow the Universe and the Universal Laws to do the multiplication.

“Don’t lose today for yesterday. Regrets are for those who offer time only to memories instead of to adventure.”

Lemon-Aid

It was Super Bowl Sunday, 2002; the family was eating at Outback Steakhouse with plans to watch the big game: Patriots vs. the Rams in the Super Dome. I was having my usual filet and Denise the New York strip.

I had picked up a habit of saving money at restaurants by ordering extra lemon wedges, squeezing them into my water glass, adding a sweetener, and thereby creating free lemonade. Lemons are supposed to aid in weight loss and, as usual, despite having steak, I was trying to be a little health conscious. I drank at least three full glasses of the lemon water before it happened.

I had just swallowed a bite of my Victoria’s Filet when Denise offered me a portion of her NY strip. I put it in my mouth when she then said, “Look Mariah Carey is about to sing.” I turned around, and glanced at the TV just as FOX was breaking for a commercial. I turned back around and swallowed, forgetting that I had just inserted a large piece of steak in my mouth, which I hadn’t chewed even once. It lodged in my throat. Regardless of the Outback motto, there are rules when it comes to eating steak; you must chew before swallowing!

Breathe

You know that feeling when, as a child, you hit the ground hard during a game of football or soccer, and you can’t catch your breath, but as awful as that is, you know within moments that you’re going to able to breathe…well this was like that…without the breathing part. I was not breathing. I was choking. I was dying.

I stood up, looking around the room for someone who might look like a doctor. (I think there ought to be a law that states that if you are a doctor, capable of performing an emergency tracheotomy, you should wear something around your neck that flashes: I Am Doctor!) Meantime, Denise was trying to give me the Heimlich Maneuver, but was doing it from the side because I was too large to get her arms around.

Relax

There was a moment of realization, as the sounds around lessened, as well as the prospects of living to see the opening kick-off, that I was going to die, right there in an Outback Steakhouse on Super Bowl Sunday, because I forgot to do what moms tell us to do from the age of three: “chew your food.” I would have laughed out loud if I could have. Then, there was Peace. I stood there knowing that within moments I was going… to be dead, headed somewhere else, and totally at (and with) Peace. No fear, no pain, no strain, no regrets. I relaxed.

Denise hadn’t given up. She was bound and determined I was going to see and hear Mariah Carey sing the national anthem, or she, I mean me, was going to die trying. She was squeezing me like the lemons I had used to make the mock lemonade of which I had drunk three glasses, and saved my life, just in time for me to hear Mariah sing and the home of the brave! Apparently, Denise pumped the lemon water I had been swigging, back up my throat just enough to dislodge the chunk of steak, and when it went back down it dropped right below the wind pipe. It stayed there, or so it seemed, for hours. Every time I swallowed, the discomfort was a reminder of just how close I came to moving on. Denise said she’d seen my eyes begin to glaze over just before water began to seep out the sides of my mouth. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade!

The point of this story is twofold. Had I died that day, it would have been fine, even Divine. I was at peace; there were no regrets. Life is not tragic, no matter how the curtain closes. Because there were, and are, more days, I use each one as an opportunity to accept and express my Divinity, knowing I am God’s Best Idea!, and living the Undeniable Life.