Because Our Longing Is Ageless

All the moments of confusion and sorting out

Today, I am not at ease with myself, which is the opposite of what you hear people my age and older say.

I am supposed to say, “I’ve never felt more like myself. I have settled into a newfound freedom as I care less about what people think of me and am less tied down by the attitude of striving.” And I usually feel that way.  

But I resonate with both mindsets: I care less about what people think of me and feel good about balancing work, rest and play. But still, I feel listless and confused. There is an edge I think I am missing. 

Perhaps I have become complacent? Where has my desperation for God gone? 

I miss part of me—the girl-woman of almost twenty years ago who knew she was desperate and longed deeply for something she couldn’t see. She fell in love with God for the first time and was hungry for more. She was all in. She wanted to join God in fighting for her heart. And so she did.

I am curious why God is bringing her to my mind now—why I think and wonder about her—the younger me who longed for freedom, the younger me who had no answers but was curious about engaging with God’s heart. 

As I write these words, I am sitting on the floor of our house, my slippered feet pointed toward the flames of a November fire. The amber-jeweled eyes of twin owl Andirons stare at me with gold flickers while the California sky outside the windows grows increasingly sad and gray. A few people walk by on the sidewalk. The afternoon rain is just about to pour out. One bloom is on the ancient rose tree just outside the front door.

I am here.

I open my journal to the question my friends and I discussed earlier this week: “Is there an area in my life, Lord, that You want to make holy?” We talked about the man in the book of Joshua during the fall of Jericho, who, along with his whole family, God destroyed when he disobeyed God’s commands and took silver and gold from the plunder, hiding it underneath the ground under his tent.

The event is alarming and dramatic, but we know God is loving and has beautiful plans for His people. Trusting Him—not compartmentalizing our hearts and living separate from Him—is always so good.

But I do it: I hide. I pretend. I deceive. I am here and not here.

My journal reads; 

Go when I say go.
Stop when I say stop.
Attend to my whispers in you.
Let Me purify you.

So I asked Him, "What have I buried, Lord?" He whispered that I am still insecure, and this insecurity hurts people. I still need validation, but it is validation from Him He wants me to seek. He wants to keep me close, remind me who I am, and hear Him call me True.

It is easy to romanticize the past; perhaps I have been doing that. I feel like I want to go backward even while I want to go forward. As I grow older, I know more and yet still know so little—about God’s love, about my capacity for sin, and about my desperate desire for Him to guard my heart, purify me and make me reach for Him again and again.

I thought the rain would have started by now. But it is still quiet, and I am sore from sitting. So I stretch my legs, roll my shoulders, and take the deep breaths that help me awaken to His presence in me. 

It is time to get up, up off this floor.

I am loved, I am loved, I am loved. 

I will go outside into the garden. The air is cool and fresh out there.

---

You Can Say That

Let it not be accidental 
how you come for me,
the knockoff chase of 
longing like a
twisted shirt, 
salt-crispy and bleached
with ocean mist and air,
or all the voices, 
the promises you 
put in the sky to collect, 
like the magic dust 
Peter Pan stole and 
I want on my face, 
my cheeks tilting now 
up to light. 
I like the color of it, 
the color of hope, 
not the second-hand kind, 
but the beautiful 
running-toward-me kind,
the you-are-coming, 
you-are-really-coming kind, 
and there is no other place 
you want to be.