Our longings are made for beauty.Tracing the eternity set in our hearts
Twelve healing movements for a longing heart—my free guide for subscribers.
When I was in the throes of my mid-twenties, feeling blindsided by the reality of life, someone I looked up to told me, “Whatever feels like love to you, feel free to go and do it.” There was both deep goodness and hidden instability in that moment. To understand why, you may need to know the season I was in. During most of my teen years, I struggled a lot with religious shame. I coped with it by giving myself a rigid dress code and pretending to be uninterested in boys because it made me feel more righteous. By now, I felt I’d lived enough hypocrisy in high school to last a lifetime. I wanted my twenties to be different, yet internalized mindsets don’t untangle on their own. With an early faith built largely on what I suppressed, I’d grown to fear many of my own desires—including everyday, ordinary impulses to share moments of connection with others. The habits of my younger years kept bleeding into the present. I needed to change something. I longed to freely let go of “cleaning my outsides,” so I could give attention to my inner life. Jesus’ words to the Pharisees left me feeling exposed. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matt. 23:25). Though I longed for authenticity, I felt trapped by fear. What if I make the wrong move? I believed if I kept trying to give my energy to “keep the outside of my cup clean,” I would have nothing left for the inside. And I felt scared I’d take it too far. For me, cleaning the inside of my cup meant learning how to live my faith from desire more than duty. I wanted to live, not from obligation, but a life that genuinely resonated with the specific design of my person. I felt overwhelmed between what to throw out and what to hold onto, and I truly needed words of assurance. Don’t be afraid to practice love. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18). I firmly believe it’s the essence of what my Christian mentor wanted me to know when the words were shared: “Whatever feels like love to you, feel free to go and do it.” On the one hand, those words ministered to me. They gave me the gumption that woke me from a kind of paralysis. And on the other hand, “whatever feels like love to you” is a phrase my mentor later wanted to rephrase. Of course, I knew I didn’t want to go crazy. There were certain moral lines I knew I wanted to stay inside. Yet, for sake of authentic faith, certain structures had to go…and I didn’t know which. My mentor’s advice made me wonder… maybe I can depend a lot more on an inner sense of love? Well, when I exercised the things that felt like love to me at the time, it resulted in damaged friendships, boundary issues and depression. Just like music needs certain structures to guide emotional expression, my love needed guardrails as well. I may as well have jumped on a stage, pulled out a banjo, and played whatever felt like music to me. (I don’t know banjo music.) The definitions I find of the word “music” vary greatly. Some emphasize words like “organization, structure, pattern, rhythm” while others emphasize words like “art, expression, emotion, experience.” The music I most enjoy has a great balance of both. Emotional expression without structure, or vice versa, can become either chaotic and annoying, or boring and empty. The downside of “whatever feels like love to me” is that it quickly becomes chaotic to the point of misery. It’s no wonder that when Paul instructed Timothy on how to lead well, he said, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion” (1 Tim. 1:5-6). Paul didn’t want chaos for Timothy and offered structure for the mission. Scripture teaches authenticity, and it also teaches the structural pillars of health and joy. While my mentor’s initial advice didn’t share that structure, it still became a gift that helped me find courage to stop ignoring my heart. The moment when I considered “what feels like love” helped me acknowledge how my life at the time drained me. My heart felt unengaged. The cycle of duty and burnout I lived did not speak of harmony, and my life felt off course in ways hard to name. Proverbs warns that the wellspring of life comes from the heart and that we must care for that wellspring with vigilance (Prov. 4:23). If my heart is sending me alert signals that my way of life is draining me, wisdom requires me to notice. A heart built on duty, while desire goes ignored, is a heart where love needs room to breathe. In the book of Exodus, when Jethro saw Moses living out of a grueling sense of duty that left him completely empty, Jethro called Moses to pay attention, saying, “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out” (Ex. 18:17-18). The level of exhaustion Moses was serving from, left him where he could hardly live from love anymore. They found a solution which balanced responsibility with the genuine needs of Moses. When I become so afraid to listen to my heart that I ignore the moments which leave me weary and empty, I am invited to more. Jesus’ call is “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). The instinct that love needs structure is entirely correct, yet love also requires emotional authenticity—and it’s entirely worth the risk to practice learning to balance both. It’s good to notice when a path leaves me struggling to love from my heart, and to consider what love would do. Love won’t rush me to decide a new way. Yet, it won’t leave me defeated by the fate of an empty life. The imperfect advice I received still helped me find the courage I needed, and we are loved by a God who takes our human attempts at love and redeems them for good. So, if you know moments of paralyzing fear yourself, I want to pass the encouragement on—even if I say it imperfectly. Don’t be afraid to go and practice love. While religious shame stifles your spirit, true structural health will protect it. The goal is a harmony of love that springs up from a tended inner life—from the rhythms of a clean heart, a clear conscience, and unfeigned trust in God.
I once received a reprimand that shaped my view of love. A stern rebuke gave me sweet realization that love is a bias—a bias found beneath the surface of clear rationality. I find this true in the long haul, and in the new seeds of love too. My seeds of love found life on a Sunday. For at least a dozen weeks since I’d met Luiz, we’d hung around after church to talk. He’d even slipped me a note with his number on it one week. I spent a full two hours trying to decide how to write a one-line text message. When I heard he’d be in a speech competition, it caught my interest. As a regular attender of a Toastmasters club, he and another man would compete to give the most humorous speech. On the day of the competition, I stepped into the dim backroom of the Italian restaurant where their group met. I spotted Luiz and waved before taking a seat to watch the events unfold. The tables formed three sides of a square, with the fourth side open for the podium. Each chair faced the center. In the group of 25 or so, the room held more than strangers. I noticed Luiz’s sister and another woman from church. A man with a balding dome and a mustache gave his speech first. He spoke like the kind of uncle any kid would like to have and captured the room well. Then Luiz gave his speech about a childhood moment of self-consciousness. The joy in his face was what mesmerized me. He spoke with exuberance and I didn’t want to miss a second of how it shaped his bearing, or the way his eyes danced when he smiled. When it was over, in my delight to have witnessed the moment, it took me a minute to realize that the president of this Toastmasters club expected each person there to offer an evaluation one by one around the room. All of two more people would be offering their thoughts before it would be my turn. In my whole eighteen years, I’d never had to offer feedback on a speech before. I tried to catch fragments of what was said by the people who went before me but my thoughts raced too fast to catch much. I tried to mentally categorize what the elements of a speech might be, but everything I learned in speech class vanished from my brain. What could I say about Luiz’s presentation? How do you put language to the way a voice sounds? Something about pacing? His eyes. Oh dear. The moment arrived and I was asked which speech I liked best. The president’s pen hovered in the air ready to note my answer. “I liked Luiz’s speech best.” While my answer was different from those who answered before me, it was entirely truthful. I could at least lean on the truth. “And why did you like Luiz’s speech best?” he asked. “I liked Luiz’s speech because I like Luiz.” I tried to act as if the matter was settled and looked on to the next person. The man forced his pen flat on the podium and pursed his lips sternly before responding. “I will not allow for any bias in this Toastmasters club.” I followed my gut. “I’m so sorry but…I don’t think my bias can be helped.” This got an annoyed eye roll from the club president, but it also brought a smile from Luiz with eyes that crinkled in the corners. After dinner, he walked me to my car. Though he wasn’t named the winner, he said he felt like one. When I got his invite the next morning to go out for lunch, I didn’t take two hours to message him this time. Soon, we were seated at Jason’s Deli, table for two—I’m so glad objectivity didn’t win the competition. Today, I call him Nano and we have three kids. And a refusal to be starkly rational may leave us with uncertain moments, but it’s essential to the mix that makes up a life of love. The long-haul of love needs a determination to shed clinical approaches, especially when it’s tricky. Maybe there’s a type of bias that shows the magic the human soul was made to be. Maybe embracing it a few thousand times over is all that love might ask—to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things (1 Cor. 13:7).
The moments that let us down often do a quiet work to make way for a time, far in the future, that takes our breath away. On a visit to my grandpa’s farm as a child, my cousins and brothers and I walked down the farm-to-market road with our eyes set on the water tower. It sits a mile or so down the road and we aimed to walk all the way there. The green fields stretched out on either side of the road, and we strode down the center of a wide open universe. The grand goal was to go and stare at the tower’s lofty stature against the open sky, take our pictures there, and come home to declare our feat. But we were young, our legs grew tired, and sunset loomed. We did take pictures with the yellow flood gauge along the road, but we didn’t make our goal. The next day, my aunt drove my cousins to the water tower for pictures. This idea didn’t feel as grand to me though. I can’t remember if we ever tried again, but the water tower trek stuck in my memory. In later years, I would sometimes peer in that direction and remember how proudly we walked toward it that day. On some visits we pulled our aunt’s and uncle’s old bicycles out of the chicken house and tried to ride them down the road. But the rusty frames and aged tires never carried us far. I can’t remember if we hoped to ride them to the water tower. I just know we rode in that direction. Nano and I have lived at Grandpa’s old farm for ten years now. Toward the tail end of the school year, our son—our youngest child—learned to confidently ride his bike without training wheels, and the family usage of our bicycles has ramped up. A couple weeks back on a Sunday evening, our kids begged for a family bike ride and Nano and I readily agreed. The air grew crisp with the dipping sun, and clouds squiggled across the sky, ready to play. I imagined we would ride to the half-mile point, then head back as we’ve done before. But when we came to that half-mile point where another road crosses ours, the family kept riding. At the sight of the water tower, my first memory of it came flooding back. I remembered my young excitement to travel all the way there. I remembered the old rusty bikes. Suddenly I felt as if an old forgotten dream might be coming true in its own way. Soft glowing lines shone from the clouds and the smiles on my family glowed too. With proud delight we stopped when we came to the sight. The decision wasn’t spoken, just arrived at. All five of us stood beside our bikes staring up at the towering form. Nano snapped our picture and the moment felt perfectly right. In the ten years we’ve lived here I’d never walked or rode my bike to the tower before. I’d nearly forgotten that childhood hope to approach it on the road under the open sky. Somehow, I’d never imagined doing it with my husband and children. Yet it just happened, and it felt glorious. When we rode away with my daughter beside me, I kept watching the tower make its statement in the golden gleam of evening. Here in this moment, I didn’t want to forget my girl’s brown hair, the painted sky and the whizzing of our wheels spinning. The evening spoke plainly. Even though disappointments had filled my mind that morning, that very same day brought the sweetest fulfillment to an old childhood hope. The disappointments of yesterday made today that much sweeter. Today’s letdowns may soon be distant memories. Then, one day when you don’t expect them, they may rise up again to meet you—with a kind bliss you’d never know if the disappointment had never been yours. Maybe under the sky of a Father who gives good gifts, the sky of a God who set eternity into our hearts, maybe every disappointment is intended as a foreshadow of the joy He longs to share with us somewhere down the road.