Heartsick

(A friend at her wedding, 2009)

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12


Cynicism is easier than acknowledging the pain of a deferred hope. Playing off our desire as a "nothing" or shaming ourselves into thinking "It's stupid to want such a thing. I shouldn't want anything, I should be content, I shouldn't desire for anything else, I need to trust God, so I must be happy; nothing's perfect so I shouldn't expect better...." sounds spiritual, but isn't. It is bitterness, shame, apathy, hopelessness, and unbelief disguised as good spirituality.

Contentment means "a state of happiness and satisfaction". Christians seem to often brush over their desires and grief with the insistence that we must be content instead of grieving and longing. We are not "trusting God" enough if we feel pain or want anything beyond what we have in front of us. While we receive contentment from God and are called to exercise self-control, does it follow that a desire for a husband, to be out of poverty, to be cared for and close to others, for a time of rest, for a closer walk with Christ, deeper friendships, for the world to be healed, for a car or house, for grief to end, or any number of longings we have that are not explicitly outside of God's law to desire, should be ignored, squashed down, or are inherently wrong? Our contentment is solidly IN Christ and this state of happiness and satisfaction can be only found in relationship with him, despite our circumstances, but it is wrong to assume that a discontent in hopes deferred is ungodly. Why would we ever need to pray if that were the case?

This world is full of grief and sorrow. I was told this weekend at a women's retreat to remember that there are some griefs that will never be healed this side of heaven. The thought that our experience in this world will never be without that tinge of pain is hard for us to swallow. We like to avoid pain and cover it up with all sorts of mechanisms clothed as righteousness. We can, however, learn to hold onto our hope in Christ while feeling the grief that this world has to offer. We can choose to enter into the sorrow and properly mourn the loss of the Goodness that we and the world experienced before the Fall. At the same time, we have Christ as our hope and therefore can believe "to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living" even now.

I was reminded this weekend that God has created us with longings and he tells us, far more often than the word "contentment" appears in the Bible, that we should ask God for the desires on our hearts, to pray and keep asking, keep asking, keep asking...

Some of our hopes will be answered here in this life and our heartsick griefs will turn into a tree of life as we see our longings fulfilled. Our longings for ultimate healing from pain, sorrow, brokenness, and weariness in every aspect of our human experience will come when Christ returns or we reach heaven, whichever comes first. Until then, we live in the realm of longing and heartsickness, and the need to ask God to answer our hopes.