desire – Aspirational Adventures

Do You Know The Desire Of Your Heart

and how often do you sit calmly for long enough to listen? Or can you only really hear your heart’s desires if you are delighting in God?

According to Googlephotos it was ten years ago today that we first walked to Aber Falls. This was a side path so we took it. That’s what we were like back then when Renly was only 4 years old and could walk for miles and miles and miles. Interestingly we’ve not walked this path since that day. Some of that is because Natural Resources Wales have been doing a major replanting scheme so the fir trees that were beyond this path have been removed and new native to the area trees are being replanted.

This morning I was reading Psalm 37 as part of the Bible Society’s Lent readings for today and this verse jumped out at me

Take delight in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

What struck me was – how many of us really know the desires of our hearts? And how many of us stick to a plan we got 10, 15, 20, 40, etc years ago and keep trying to get there even though we have changed massively since then? This is why I’ve used the above picture. Only ten years ago our dog could walk miles and now, much as he enjoys his walks, he is much slower and cannot walk as far. But also this piece of land looked like it was going to be conifer trees forever but now there are struggling beeches and ash, as a more native forest is re-established. The desires and plans have changed both for my dog and this piece of land.

We moved here 10 years ago. Back then my desire was to run our house as an Airbnb house, offering hospitality to low-budget travellers. Even before Covid the ethos of Airbnb travellers was changing and I was thinking of stopping. The desire of my heart had changed. Also a around that time I was doing lots of work with children and teens around Creative Writing but again my desires have changed.

Though in both my “desires” it was Covid and Lockdown that accentuated my need to relook at my heart and what it really wanted. And as my regular blog readers know I have done a lot of QEC healing since Covid too.

My heart has changed. My desires have changed. My circumstances have changed. My energy levels have changed. So much has changed that I cannot expect to keep slogging on with what I believed my heart wanted back then. I am always changing and always evolving.

I was emailing with someone the other day about relationships and of how hard marriage is because we are in to for a very very long time and yet we are not the same people who got married back then, and neither are our spouses. We have changed. We have evolved. Circumstances have changed us. Circumstances are often a driving force for changing the desires of our hearts.

So back to the verse – I think there is a connection too. I think the psalmist is saying that it is as we delight in the Lord that we learn what the desires of our heart are. Not what we think they ought to be, or what we think they should be, or what we think would please others, but what we really really really desire deep down inside. And I do think we need to do loads of healing to get beyond the “good girl/good boy” scenario and the people pleasing, or the “what would look good to others/friends/family”.

But I honestly believe as we hang out with God, delighting in God, delighting in the fact that we are forgiven, delighting that we are loved unconditionally, and that if we mess up on those desires we can pick ourselves up and start again and that the Creator of the Universe will still be by our side. But we have to give this time. We can’t fit it in around other things. It has to be a part of all that we do, all day, every day. Back to what the Apostle Paul calls “praying continuously”. That’s just hanging out with God and delighting in them, not mithering at them to change things. A bit like something I talk about with my writing group – of not striving but of allowing things to ponder, to touch those Alpha waves, those Eureka moments – all of which come when we are delighting in something not striving to get an answer.

This verse isn’t about telling God what we want them to do but is about being with them and enjoying them. Delighting in them.

It is ok for our desires to change and change and even change back again but if we delight in the Lord then we can step out with confidence and do what will make us glow with joy and peace.

Connected

I’ve been reading about the Red Crescent and the Red Cross lurching from disaster to disaster, appealing for donations and funding; Greek fires, Greek floods, dams bursting in Libya causing horrendous flooding, on-going strife in various African countries. And then there’s the fires in the West of the USA, floods in the South-East, on-going drug smuggling in various South American countries. Add in the migrant crisis – fear of those who leave whether from wars, famines, or for economic reasons and the fears of those who live in the countries the migrants are trying to reach. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But we live in a world that is connected. The whole chaos theory of if something happens in one part of the world it can majorly effect something in another part of the world. The migrant crisis is a prime example of this – wars and famines often in countries we have never heard of affect us here not just with people coming to try to find safety but with commodities too.

So we need to be seeing the bigger picture not just lurch from crisis to crisis, not just try to find resources for X which takes it way from Y, not just giving time this when that means we can’t give to that. We need to know what the big picture is. But, and I know I’ve said this before, we need to slow down. We need to listen, need to really listen – to our world, to God, to stop trying to logically rationalise.

But how?

I think it is by connecting. Connecting with others. Connecting with God. Connecting with the world. When we lurch from one thing to another, one crisis, one trauma, one anxiety, we lose connection. We lose how we fit into the bigger picture.

As I’ve often said I don’t go to regular church any more, but I do feel connected with God and a group of Christian friends, and with the online things that are out there. But last Sunday I went to a church service. It was the sort of thing I like; for all ages but not cheesy; a deep message; time to chat with others about the message and other things; even though it was led by the vicar he did not portray himself as the one with the answers. It did make me realise I do need, occasionally, to connect with others, to hear other people, to think. But also what happened within connecting there was that the things in the all-age service connected into what we were doing in the youth service which followed.

But I think the reason it “worked” was because I did not go along on a superficial level, did not think I was better/more spiritual/more knowledgeable than others – both in the service and in the youth group. But I went along want to connect, wanting to learn, wanting to grow, wanting more than. And because I wanted “more than” I got it.

Going back to thinking about the bigger picture and want to stop lurching from one thing to another – I wonder how often we really want to know more. Whether when we watch the news, see newsfeeds, or even read blogs about all sorts, do we really want to learn, to grow, to get “more than”, or whether we come with our ready made answers that we will then trot out to others whether they want to hear them or not?

I think to connect we need to go in with an attitude of wanting to gain from others as well as give. Then I think we might get a glimpse of the bigger picture of what God is up to in our world.