We have these containers in our minds where we store information. They are called schemas. These containers are created by us when we see or learn something new. We either place that new piece of information into a preexisting container that is the right shape and size to hold it, or else we must create a new container that is an adequate shape and size to contain the new information. Like putting away leftovers.

For instance, a child learns the concept of “mother” very early. She is feminine, with long hair, breasts, a higher pitched voice, etc. Then the child encounters another woman. He may think “mother”. He has just placed this  other woman into the mother schema. She fits. She is feminine, has long hair, breasts, and a higher pitched voice. But then he is told, no, that is not “mother”, that is a woman. He is mesmerized, thinks this over, must grapple with it a little bit. Because he must now create a new schema: “Woman. Like mother, but not mother.” He will learn that Mother can fit into the Woman box, but no other woman can go into the Mother box.

Example 2: A child learns “Dog”. Four legs, fur, a tail. She then sees a cat: four legs, fur and a tail. She places it into the dog schema. Dog! But wait… the dog barks and chases balls, the cat meows and won’t chase balls. New schema. Cat: Like dog, but different. Four legs, fur, tail, meows, won’t play fetch.

And this is how we learn everything from birth until death. Every time we are presented with a new piece of information we must decide, does this fit into the schema of something else I already understand? Or do I need to create a new place for it? Expand my mind to fit this new, different sized or shaped information into?

Here’s where it gets interesting. If there is no place to put the new information, if it does not fit into a schema we already have, and if we fail to create a new schema to hold it, one of two things happens. Either we cram it into a place that it does not fit and so warp its structure or content in our minds, giving it a misshapen identity in our perception (in other words, we see that thing differently than it really is)… Or it simply gets discarded. We do not store that information at all because we did not figure out where to contain it.

Now, here is where it gets interesting. The science of seeing God.

Every one of us has a very different God that we see in our minds. In my belief, our view of God can come from only three sources.

1: Preexisting schemas. What we already know and understand about our parents and other authority figures.

2: New schemas. Ones we try to create to contain the idea of God in our minds. These also will be greatly influenced or misshapen by #1.

3: Revelation. Basically having your mind blown by new information that God reveals to us, blasting a sudden larger-sized, amazingly-different-shaoped box into our minds all at once to see to understand something very big.

The first, placing God into a preexisting schema, is where most people stop. We simply cram God into a container that already exists in our minds. Since our fathers are our guideposts for developing this understanding in God’s design, this is the container he is almost always placed in.

If we felt protected growing up by our Dad, it is easy to see God that way. Protector. And we can have a strong awareness of God as a protector because that is where we placed him in our minds. Fathers protect… he is a father… so he will always protect me. This is the shape and size of the box he has been placed in, so he takes this shape in our minds.

If we grew up feeling abandoned by our father, then we can easily place God into this schema and no matter the reality of what is happening at any given moment, we can feel abandoned by God as a perpetual state, simply because that is where we placed him in our minds. Fathers aren’t there… he is a father… he must be someplace else too. Or my father didn’t come… so he probably won’t come either. Or my father got remarried and had other kids that were always more important to him… so God probably likes his other kids more than me too… he’s probably more busy with them when I need him. Or… my dad left when I was little and I never saw him again… So… where is God?… out there somewhere in the universe far far away?

It is highly likely that no two people will have the exact same image of God in their understanding. In this case, sharing our beliefs with one another is fantastic, when it is welcomed, but debating, trying to force your version of God into someone else’s mind, is a completely counter-productive waste of time. Your God won’t fit into someone else’s mind any more than theirs can fit into yours.

I’d like to tell you my story now. Where I put God in my mind and why. And subsequently, the shifting and shaping of new schemas to place him into, thus giving me a more renewed, more accurate picture of who he is each year.

I grew up on a farm in a small town. My dad was a storyboard artist, and cartoon animator for the big studios in California. We moved to the farm from California when I was six so they could give us a more wholesome, safer upbringing. From that moment on, my dad worked from home and UPSed all his work to and from the studios. He was always there. Always. And if he left, we often went with him. Any moment of the day or night when I needed my dad, he was easy to find. In his art studio, in the large front living room of our house, which was completely open to the rest of the house. In fact on “inking days”– when he had to make something permanent, rather than just pencil sketching– he would hang a sign over the huge archway leading into the room that said Inking! and we had to tiptoe and whisper if we were inside until the sign came down. He was that present. His work environment was our environment and vice versa. And anytime I needed him or had a question or saw a spider or felt the sudden urge to make an announcement, he would give me his attention. His work was easy to pause, and he always paused for me.

He loved to hold me and I loved to sit on his lap. He prayed over me and tucked me into bed every night. He always comforted me when I was sad, scared, hurt, or angry. He was gentle. He told me I was beautiful, and smart, and funny, and creative. He provided for me everything I ever needed. I never went without. I never felt unsafe or mistreated. And he was neurotically protective. I had no fears in the world because my daddy was never ever far off.

And so this is the schema I had available to me from the very start, the place I could place God in my mind. Protective. Providing. Close. Always available. Aways approachable. Invited into his work environment. Seen and valued and oh so loved. This is what God has looked like to me my entire life. I never feared God. I never doubted God. I never worried about anything. (I should add, personality has a lot to do with this too. My personality type happens to be very spiritually open, and more prone to trust and optimism, and less prone to fear, doubt, and suspicion. Every type sees things differently and has different responses.)

But it gets a little muddy after this. See, God is not just a father, is he? We are also trying to make room in our minds for… three separate and unique parts of God. Hmmm.

When I was seventeen I fell in love. A year later he disappeared from my life. I never saw him again except in my dreams. So after a year of mourning I married another. And he left me repeatedly, constant abandonment. I sat alone. Waiting for my lover to return. He never did. Then he divorced me. And my entire world crumbled around me. There was an almost biblical level “Job” experience. Looooonnng story short (though a lot of it is in other posts) soon I was sitting in a pile of nothing but ashes.

All the while, I never once felt my father-God ever leave my side. I never cried without feeling his presence around me. I never worried how I was going to be taken care of. I knew my Daddy-God.

A year and a half later, I met my husband. But I was so broken by this point that I could not love again yet. I was drowning in self-hatred, saturated in trauma, and had no good experiences yet with a man that wasn’t my father. I could see that Jesse was right for me, but I was resisting, and so afraid. I asked God, the one I trusted, to make it clear to me if I was to marry again. If I was to marry him. And he did. (Oh boy, did he! I need to write a blog about that story!) So once I got the go-ahead from the one I trusted–my father-God–I married him. I did not love him yet, not the way one is supposed to love the one they are marrying. I was far too broken, my first husband had destroyed me. It was a choice to commit myself again, more than a feeling. And then for years I dug around in my cluttered soul, trying to muster up feelings that I wanted to have for him. I fought for healing, and sought it with tenacity.

I found it.

I clung to my Father-God and he guided me through it all.

And all along I knew that God, in my mind, was only in my Father schema. Because the Bridegroom schema, the one where Jesus was supposed to go, it was warped and misshapen. It was twisted and scarred and had been stomped on repeatedly. It was easy for me to see this great benevolent father-figure presiding over everything… but this schema where you put a Savior, the one that’s supposed to come one day, take you away and marry you… it was completely misshapen. I had no healthy schema in my mind in which to place a God that was also a man. Jesus.

I had dreams about this often. I asked Jesus who he was and he would come to me in my dreams. I had been “saved” my entire life. But Christ? The one who did the saving? He did not fit into my mind yet. And I kept myself, without trying to, turned slightly away from him, because I knew I was desirable as a daughter… but I did not feel desirable to another type of deity, a type that was not a father, but was a kind of groom. A man who was also God who intended a kind of marriage to us one day… it didn’t fit! I couldn’t comprehend it.

He came to me in dreams because I asked him to. I wanted to meet him. I wanted to know him. Just like with Jesse, the one I trusted more than anyone else–my father-God–had told me I was meant to have a deep intimate relationship with this man-God called Jesus. So I trusted him, I listened, and I searched for him. And in these dreams where he visited me, it was always the same. He looked a lot like my first love. And I was afraid to get too close because I felt so undesirable. In almost all of them, I would suddenly become aware that I was dirty and smelled bad, and I would try to find a shower and wanted to clean my teeth before I got close to him. In one of these dreams (which I blogged about here) I was terrified that he didn’t really want me. I was afraid to get close to his face. I felt dirty and unattractive. Because in my mind, men who were not my father that I desired… none of them desired me back, not properly.

Fathers were safe.

But lovers, husbands, other desirable men were not.

I talked to my Father-God about this often. I would only pray to Father. Father was always there. But a betrothed? Would he want me? Would he like me? Am I desirable? But things had also changed. My new husband was exactly what I needed and nothing at all like the other two I had loved.

It took years. And my love and desire for Jesse grew and grew and grew. My husband schema began to revise itself based on this new information. he never abandoned me. He walked patiently with me through the roughest parts of my healing. He gave me everything I needed and more. He raised my son like he was his own. I eventually bonded very deeply to this man, this safe man, and then clung to him.

And then recently I was sitting in my room and I suddenly felt this jolt of emotional anguish shoot through me and out of my mouth came, “Jesus, who are you! I know our father, but I do not know you!” Instantly I began to sob. It had come out of nowhere really. It was the beginning of hunger pangs. The very beginning of desire.

Just like my husband, I had chosen Jesus even before I desired him. I had decided with my mind before I had felt anything with my heart, because I knew that it was the right choice for me. And then it was a waiting game, waiting for feelings to kindle, desires to shift and grow and point toward this person I hardly knew at all. I wanted to actually know him, to create an appropriate schema in which to place him so that I could see him clearly. Really see him. Not a warped image. But a reality of this person… who is also a God… who is love in perfection… who wants to be with me… forever.

This part of God that has been trapped inside a misshapen box in my mind.

A box that is shaped like my drunk ex-husband who’s real love was in a bottle of Southern Comfort.

A box that is shaped like the first boy I worshipped who disappeared, who didn’t want me enough to stay.

A box that is shaped like every man I ever desired that came and went.

A box that is so warped, so not the true shape and size of Jesus. A relationship that is pure, not merely human, not sexual, not perverse, but intimate in an entirely different way.

And now I am trying to release him from that schema, and trying to create a new one. One that he fits into.

Not mother… woman. Not dog… cat.

Waiting only on revelation to show me his real shape and size and content, so that I can see him for real. And this is the way we will know God. This is the only way we will see God, in all his parts, and all his traits. We have to ask God to reveal himself to us, ask Jesus to reveal himself to us, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal himself to us. And then as they slowly help you create new schemas, as they slowly show you more and more, the boxes in your mind will expand and grow and take shape. Proper shape. The real shape and size of God, as far as we can understand in our current state.

So when people say they see God, this is what they mean.

It’s not with our eyes.

It’s with our understanding.

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