Desires of the Heart

You know how it is when you want something really, really bad?  When you are just consumed with it, obsessed by it?  When you spend your free time dreaming about it, praying about it, hoping for it, and researching it?  

Sometimes its a thing, 

sometimes a relationship.

Sometimes its a job,

and sometimes a stage in life.  

Sometimes its even for another person.

But whatever it is, you find it occupying your consciousness and soaking up your time.

Usually, I don't find myself getting caught up in the "thing" desire very much anymore.  I remember wanting a (fairly basic) karaoke machine for my 11th birthday.  I'd been to a friend's party, and she got one, and I thought it was the neatest thing ever.  I thought about it, talked about it, and probably even prayed about it.  I did not get it.

And, really, that was ok.

I got over it.  

Even at that age, I did realize that it wasn't that important.

Desires for a certain job, a certain school, a certain relationship have all come and gone, each with their own degree of involvement and angst, with the exercises of faith and will.  They have been important in their time, in shaping my life and allowing me to grow.  Probably the most difficult, wonderful, heart-shattering and faith-trying desire of my life so far has been that of becoming a mother.  

Two years ago yesterday, we found out we were finally expecting our first baby.  Four months later, we lost that little one.   The doctors eventually told us that we probably could not ever have children without invasive   and aggressive infertility treatments. The full experience of that time will have to wait for another post.  Suffice it to say, I was truly shattered. 

When you know that your desire is selfish, or material, or really unimportant in the eternal scheme, it is really not hard to let it go if it doesn't come.  But when you know that your desire is righteous, and in accordance with Heavenly Father's eternal plan, when you know that it would bring about good to yourself and those around you, when you know that it is even a command and all you want more than anything is to fulfill that mandate...

Its hard to let that desire go.

It is hard to exercise the faith that believes and hopes, yet doesn't cling desperately.  It is hard, in those times of passionate yearning, to learn to let your ultimate desire be to the Source of blessings himself, rather than to that specific blessing.  

But the other options are:

A) sink into a dark pit of sorrow and depression and come to doubt God's goodness, if not his very existence.

B) harden your heart, saying, "Whatever...I don't care anymore," and walk into the cold indifference of cynicism.  

C) Continue deeper into the obsession and, whether you receive it or not, become superstitious, overzealous, and highly sensitive to offense.

(OK, maybe those were just the options for me. :) I'm not wise enough to know how it is for everyone under the sun.)

Its a choice.  Its probably the hardest choice ever, to let go of those deepest desires of your heart without giving up on them. To trust that Heavenly Father's hand is good and present, and somehow, even in what seems to be a wrong turn in our lives, His plan is working out for our eternal joy and to bless those we love. I recently read the quote,

 "When you push God's will, you miss His blessings."

Its not that he doesn't want us to desire, or to mute our requests.  But he wants for us much more than we know to want for ourselves, and we can only receive ALL he has for us when we trust Him.  Even when our own righteous desires seem to be lost in the process. 

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you," saith the Lord, "thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected (or hoped for) end."

Trust Him.