Dare to Desire

Yesterday I read an excerpt from The Journey of Desire, another fabulous book by John Elderidge. I was feeling really, well, blue is the only word I can think of, and I reached for The Ransomed Heart, a collection of short vignettes from the majority of Elderidge's books. My bookmark was on page 194, "Life Without My Closest Friend." I began to read, thinking that I'd flip through the book to find a vignette that actually spoke to the place I was right now, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I've been living the past couple months without my closest friend Christy. Sure, we share an address, but other than that, we seemed miles apart. The night before, we'd finally laid the cards on the table and agreed that there was a wedge that needed to be removed. So we removed it. But there's still a wedge between me and the rest of my life, and I think that it's disappointment. Disappointment with the way my life is going. Disappointment in people. Disappointment that the desires of my heart are going unmet. Disappointed that I'm not where I'd like to be. And I think that the Lord was trying to tell me something with this little excerpt. Here's what it said:

"'Despair,' wrote James Houston, 'is the fare of the desiring soul.' Or as Scripture says, 'Hope deferred makes the heart sick' (Prov. 13:12 NLT). How agonizing it can be to awaken desire! Over the past year I have wrestled deeply with what it means to go on. God has come to me again and again, insisting that I not give up the dream. I have ranted and railed, fought him and dismissed him. It feels crazy to desire anymore. What does it mean to live the rest of my life without my closest friend? I think of Lewis and Clark, those inseparable wilderness explorers, how we cannot think of one without the other. Lewis said of his companion, 'I could neither hope, wish, nor expect from a union with any man on earth, more perfect support or further aid in the discharge of my mission, than that, which I am confident I shall derive from being associated with yourself.' I know I shall never find another like him.

"But I am not alone in this. Most of you will by the this time have lost a parent, a spouse, even a child. Your hopes for your career have not panned out. Your health has given way. Relationships have turned sour. We all know the dilemma of desire, how awful it feels to open our hearts to joy, only to have grief come in. They go together. We know that. What we don't know is what to do with it, how to live in this world with desire so deep in us and disappointment lurking behind every corner. After we've taken a few Arrows, dare we even desire? Something in me knows that to kill desire is to kill my heart altogether." (The Journey of Desire, 22-23)

So what was the Lord telling me? Don't kill the desires. Don't kill your heart. Your heart matters. Your desires matter. Dare to desire.