The Longing

Have you ever experienced longing? 

Longing for me has meant different things - but mostly, longing manifests as the unfulfilled desires of my soul. In my years of longing, God has often chosen to satisfy them in ways that I couldn't have imagined for myself.  In some mysterious way, by trusting God and acting in obedience toward him, even if it meant walking away from what I thought I was longing for the most, I have found that he is able to fill the hole that longing created in a beautiful and life-giving way.

And yet, in all my years of experiencing God's provision and faithfulness - I still have moments of intense distrust and dislike of God's intercession in my life. Like... now... for instance. For some strange reason, this new year has created a longing in my soul that has threatened to cave in my entire being. (Could I possibly be more dramatic?) A longing has reared its head in a way that has made it impossible to ignore, impossible to cover up, and in some ways... impossible to deal with. Only a few of my closest friends know the extent of what I am speaking of, but never in my life have I felt so lonely, so empty, or so fearful about the future.

As the weeks have gone by, I have a felt a massive chasm of my own construction separate me from the God that I love. Not only have I been afraid to come to him with this longing, but I have been enraged by the thought of him. For some reason, I just have grown tired of his Lordship in my life. I have resented the ways that he has pulled me from the things I wanted most, so that I could grow in deeper intimacy with him and deeper reliance on him. I have grown resentful of that because is that all I am to you, God? Am I just some little pawn you can move around your board game to accomplish your plans... even if it means that I don't get to have the things that I have longed for? Do you care at all about what I want?

This longing is deeply personal in a way that no other longing has been - it is so intricately connected to my own perceived worth as a person, my identity, my hope for the future... to imagine it unfulfilled for all the days of my life creates unutterable horror for me. And the thought of God choosing against fulfilling it seems almost unforgivable to me. When it came down to it, I would imagine God asking me if I would still love and follow him even if it meant I handed over this longing for the rest of my life... and I realized... making the right choice wasn't as easy as I wanted it to be and this scared me. This longing - it had become an idol.

The longing had created a hole so massive and wide that I couldn't imagine anything ever filling it completely except the Longing-Fufilled itself. And yet, without even realizing it, the longing had actually brought me to the feet of the One that called me his own.

In a moment of absolute abandon and loneliness, I at last gave in. I came - trembling, crawling toward his feet. My tears, taking the form of all the fear I have been harboring about God and his goodness, questions of his faithfulness, all the secret hopes and desires yet unfilled... all of it came crashing onto his feet. And when the last tear was shed, I looked up and found his eyes. He looked on me with wells of kindness, radiating a love and acceptance that I have never before experienced , and in some mysterious way, I was able to see past even that, deeper into his searching glance, and it was there that in his eyes, I saw his own longing.

I saw that he has been longing too. He too has felt the emptiness and the loneliness and the unfulfilled hopes and desires - he too has poured out tears that have demanded a response from his Father... he too has known the sleepless nights. And in that transcendent moment, I somehow knew that part of his longing - his Holy-Longing - was for me. And it has been for me. He longs for me to make a home in him, as he has made a home in me. He longs for me to know him as a good friend, a good Father, a trustworthy Savior. He longs for me to relish cool afternoons walking with him in the garden of my soul, instead of fantasizing over what tantalizing pleasures await outside. He longs for me to give my entire life over to him, not out of fear or hope for heaven - but because I love him. Because I know that nothing else in this world satisfies any longing, aside from him.

And maybe that is the point of it all. We all long. We will all continue to yearn and hope for and desire things that will in many cases, not come to pass in our lifetime. Do we still believe that Jesus is enough? Can we still lift up an "amen, it is well" even when our lives look drastically different from how we had imagined them? Can we trust that his plans are for our good - that he does bring beauty from the ashes and the rubble of our life? Can we fall helplessly, hopelessly into the vast ocean of his love even if our eyes never see the fruits of our labor, the shores of the Promise Land, the Longing-Fulfilled?

~

In the same way, as the sinful woman from Luke 7, I pulled from my robes an alabaster jar filled with my most precious and expensive possession... Even though the freshly shed tears still glistened on his feet, I knew it wasn't enough... it wasn't enough to show the One I Love just how much my heart adores him, needs him, trusts him, delights in him... so I took the jar, and I carefully poured out its contents onto his feet. And from it, a sweet aroma filled within in the room - it smelled of my dreams, my hopes, my fears, my secrets, my love... my longing...

For it was in that moment of absolute worship and submission, that I at last found the most beautiful sacrifice I could ever give:

My whole life.