My Heart's Desire

"Desire is the source of our most noble aspirations and our deepest sorrows.  The pleasure and the pain go together; indeed, they emanate from the same region in our hearts.  We cannot live without the yearning, and yet the yearning sets us up for disappointment - sometimes deep and devastating disappointment.  Do we reach for nothing in life because our reaching opens us up to tragedy?  Because of its vulnerable nature, desire begins to feel like our worst enemy." -J. Eldredge, The Journey of Desire

We must listen to desire, look at it carefully, let it guide us through the false routes and dead ends. - John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire

Is it possible to desire something so much that you almost desperately hate it at the same time?  I've not been myself lately, with regards to one very important part of my life.  Running.  It was such a fierce journey that I started.  I accomplished really amazing things and ran some fantastic destination races.  It was invigorating.  It was literally an adventure.  So much so, that I've reached the point that now there is almost no pleasure or reward in any run.  Even a long run.  Running around the neighborhood is a reminder that I've already done this.  I think about those running bumper stickers, you know the ones that say "In my dreams, I'm Kenyan" or "Will run for wine".  The bumper sticker that is just right in front me all the time is, "27.3 - I got lost" and "13.1 - Been there, Run that".  I've already reached my goal and I've already completed hard tasks.  And as I think about what is next, It's hard to get excited when 'what's next' is so vague.  You can't tell me this isn't a part of negative thinking that you, too, have experienced at some point in your life.  You've been to this cramped place of disappointment and resignation, right?  So how do we resume with our journey and become no longer trapped from this selfish view of accomplishment?

I started running in December 2012, because I had a reality check with where the next 20 years would lead me if I continued my unhealthy ways.  After completing three-half marathons, a full marathon, a 14K, and multiple 10K, 8K, and 5K races, I feel tired, have far too many medals for my two small hooks, own a ton of racing shirts and bibs consuming their own bedroom, and I feel slightly pretentious when I decline a 5K, because it's not really a challenge anymore.  I don't share this, because I want to do bigger things and I feel the need to share that on social media.  Or that I am boasting in my accomplishments that I clearly take for granted.  Or even that your accomplishment of running a 5K for the first time is not valid or worthy of celebration.  Rather, I share this, because I think I struggle to know how to be content with the journey already traveled.  There is always so much focus on looking forward and being ready for what is next, that we often forget how to separate the good past from the bad past, and pack only the 'essentials of the past' in our travel bag as we journey on.  The past is not all bad, and there is a lot to be desired in the journey that we've already lived.

The most fatal error in life is to pretend to have found the life we prize.  Our heart's desire is to live life as it was meant to be.  We all want our journey to unfold before us and to start walking (or running) on that path.  Our heart's desire is that we bring our heart along on this journey.  If you have ever tried to do anything that requires passion, while leaving your heart behind,  you will agree that it is undoubtedly the hardest thing you will ever have to do.  I don't want to live your experiences for you, or tell you how you should feel, but you cannot accomplish great things in life if you leave your heart behind.  Running.  Teaching.  Mission Work.  Networking.  Insert type of passion here ____.  It doesn't matter.  It. Will. Be. Difficult.  Even more so without your heart, that is.

John Eldredge says in The Journey of Desire, "We must return to the journey.  Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we must pick up the trail and follow the map that we have at hand.  Desire, both the whispers and the shouts, is the map we have been given to find the only life worth living.  You may think you are following the map of desire when all you are doing is serving it slavishly, unthinkingly.  It is not the same.  We must listen to desire, look at it carefully, let it guide us through the false routes and dead ends."  C.S. Lewis advises, "I knew only too well how easily the longing accepts false objects and through what dark ways the pursuit of them leads us.  But I also saw that the Desire itself contains the corrective of all these errors.  The only fatal error was to pretend you had passed from desire to fruition, when in reality, you had found either nothing, or desire itself, or the satisfaction of some different desire."

In this season of learning to be content with not knowing 'what's next' and to be content with a journey well traveled, there is still so much for which to be thankful.  There is an endless list of things that make me smile and laugh, even on the days that I struggle to lace up my running shoes.  Even on the days that I walk past them as they gather dust.  And especially on the days that they are shoved in a bag, in a corner, out of sight.