Category: Words To Live By

I pray all the time for various reasons, but some of those prayers end up being written down and put into something I like to refer to as The God Box.

The God Box is a small wooden chest that I own which is meant to hold all the prayers I’m still waiting for the answers on. A long time ago I realized that God wasn’t always going to answer my prayers right away. Of course there have been those that were answered immediately, but there have also been many others that weren’t. These written prayers are not necessarily just about me either. There are those too that deal with other people, places, and things and each of them are placed in the box as well.

I believe every single written prayer that I placed in The God Box is like planting a seed. At some point in time, I know that each of them will sprout. It may not be in the time frame I hoped for, but at some point it will. This of course means it requires patience and that’s never been a strong suit of mine. The God Box is a tool that I utilize now as a way to help me with those patience issues. So when I place a prayer in it, I make the assumption that God is now going to be fully in charge of taking care of that seed. If you’ve ever gardened before, planting a seed in the ground requires patience because some of them could take a year or more to sprout. I’ve learned that a prayer is really no different. My ego often attempts to tell me otherwise by saying my prayers aren‘t being answered, but the reality is that they probably are, it’s just happening in a way that isn’t meeting my ego’s expectations.

One of the examples of this is a prayer that’s been within The God Box for almost two years now and it deals with my health and healing issues. My ego at times has tried to convince me that God has forgotten about this prayer because I’m still dealing with high levels of pain on a daily basis. As much as my patience levels get tested because of this, I continue to leave that prayer in The God Box because I do trust that it is being answered, it’s just taking more time than my ego really wants.

I truly love The God Box I own because I have seen my written prayers within it get answered. I’m very grateful to my sister’s family because the one I have is hand carved from them. It sits atop my dresser and reminds me every time I see it that the prayers within it are really in God’s hands.

So the next time you find yourself regularly worrying about anything in life, I encourage you to find some type of a container that can be The God Box for you. Say a blessing over it and then write down your worry on a piece of paper. Now open that container and place it within, and then trust that God is going to take it from here. Your worry has now become a prayer for God to handle and trust that it will eventually sprout just like a seed. The only thing needed on your part from this point forward may be just a little bit of patience…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

“What Would Jesus Do (WWJD)?” is a phrase that became incredibly popular back in the 1990’s. It was something that was placed on jewelry, bumper stickers, t-shirts, art, and so much more back then. Once utilized primarily by many Christians, it was a tool that was meant to demonstrate how Christ would act in any given situation.

The greatest thing that Jesus Christ represented in this world was unconditional love and that was the underlying message that WWJD was meant to portray. Two decades ago, I would have been one of those you would have seen out there sporting the paraphernalia that had this slogan on it. In fact, I did it quite often actually. Ironically though, I rarely demonstrated that in any of my actions back then. Instead, I was frequently consumed with addictions, selfishness and self-centeredness, which were the exact opposite traits of Christ.

Also during that time frame, I often got in heated arguments with others when I saw doing them doing things I felt was unloving. The words “What would Jesus do” came out my mouth more times than not to place greater weight behind how I felt. While it may have helped me win many of those arguments, the sad truth was that I was being a hypocrite. Not only was I just as guilty of all the same unloving actions I was condemning in others, I also generally offered only conditional based love to people. In other words, there was a price tag usually attached to my love.

Jesus Christ never attached any price tag to the love he offered the world. Instead, he freely gave it to each and every individual he came across, no matter who they were, what their background was, or what they had done. That is something I truly am striving for these days, but back then I wasn’t. Although I sported the WWJD slogan on most days in some fashion, I was far from living the life that Christ once did. I realize today that I utilized this WWJD phrase because it was the in-thing to do and it made me feel like I was being a good Christian. It also garnered me positive attention from other fellow Christians. While I’m not religious nor am I solely a Christian anymore these days, I still do consider myself a follower of Christ. To me, Christ was a man who died having dedicated his entire life to serving God’s will and being a vessel of unconditional love. And that is the root of the spiritual journey I find myself on today.

You won’t find me sporting the WWJD phrase anymore or any like it, because I believe it’s more important to live it through my words and actions. You also won’t find me asking someone else that question of “What would Jesus do?” either these days. On some level, I believe I was judging others when I was did it with great frequency.

The only thing I really want in life today is to live a life like Christ once did, which is one that’s filled with nothing but unconditional love for everyone. I want to do what Jesus did each and every day of his life and to be that, I know it’s not going to come from wearing a WWJD message or pushing it in someone else’s face. Instead, I need to become a living example of it by allowing my Higher Power to guide me that way one day at a time…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I want to be completely honest by stating that I still have some trust issues with my partner. All of it surrounds a single act of infidelity that took place over seven months ago now. And even though I’ve watched him become so much healthier since then, I find myself still struggling at various times to fully trust him. I realized tonight that the source of these trust issues are solely coming from my fear of abandonment.

Throughout most of my life, abandonment has been a common theme. My mother, my father, peers, friends, and partners have all made deep promises to me and later broken them. As each of them happened, my lack of trust in others solidified even deeper. Eventually, I stopped trusting anyone that got close to me because I was so used to people lying to me and breaking their promises.

When my partner and I became monogamous back in February of 2012, I had reached a place in my healing process where I was ready to begin trusting someone else again on a much deeper level. The day I discovered his infidelity over a year and a half later was one that severely triggered my abandonment issues. I put serious thought to walking away from our relationship at that time but I didn’t because I believe everyone deserves a second chance. I’m thankful I gave him one because the two of us have grown much closer ever since. The problem for me now though is those doubts I’m having of his monogamous commitment to our relationship.

While I haven’t actually seen any evidence that supports that fear, I know it’s stemming still from my fear of abandonment. Unfortunately, each of these doubts continue to lead me to behaviors that I know aren’t healthy. Sometimes I check up on him to make sure he’s at where he says he is going to be. Sometimes I interrogate him a little too much about various things. And sometimes I’ve even done some minor snooping on him too. I know that none of these behaviors are healthy, not for him, not for me, and not for us. I’m also starting to see how each is doing nothing more than slowly sabotaging our relationship.

The fact is that I wouldn’t want any of those behaviors being done to me on a regular basis. I’m also sure that I would eventually get sick and tired of someone not trusting me, especially if I was living in complete honesty and integrity. The irony in all of this is that my partner shares the same fear of abandonment as he too has gone through a considerable amount of it himself. In fact, through therapy he discovered his major motivating factor of cheating in the first place was that he was afraid I might abandon him down the road. So he attempted to sabotage it before that could ever happen. As I sit here and type this, I know now that my own acts of not trusting him are no different.

I am afraid that he might cheat on me again as I know our relationship wouldn’t be able to survive that. But I also know that all of my questioning and acts of not trusting him aren’t helping the matter either. I clearly see now that if I keep this up, it could create a self-fulfilling prophecy and I definitely don’t want that to happen. What I do want to happen is to fully trust my partner again, and I know to get there it’s going to mean walking through my fear of abandonment without acting out those fears. That means not checking up on my partner, not giving him the third degree, and believing that within him is the desire to keep the monogamy between us and only us. It’s going to take a lot more work on my part, but I have the willingness to do it.

I truly love my partner deeply and I’m thankful to my Higher Power for the healing taking place in our relationship with our abandonment issues. I fully believe that our Higher Power is giving us the gift each day to work through these issues by being in this connection with each other. The challenge for the two of us now is to trust each other and to not let our fears overwhelm us, as that will only lead us to sabotaging our connection. I make a promise to myself today that I am going to do whatever it takes to work through this, and I pray that my partner will do the same…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson