At the Corner of Broken & Love

What Do I Want?
A friend called in tears over a long-unfullfilled dream. I feel so unsettled, she said. It’s been two years, she said, and it’s not getting better.
Maybe, I said, even though this sounds scary, maybe, you need to walk deeper into it. Maybe Jesus wants you to really lay this down. Maybe He wants you to want Him more than this dream, I said.
I want many things more than I want Jesus. There are the tiny, daily, worldly, completely unjustifiable things, like a pair of red flats, just one more good hair day (because I’m apparently living one good hair day at a time these days), just one more cozy, chunky sweater to get me through this frigid, blah Illinois winter. Now, I wouldn’t walk into a store and say, I need red flats…like, more than I need Jesus…in a size 7, please. But I went out today and found myself some red flats, without really thinking if I needed them…who are we kidding?...knowing I didn’t need them…without asking Jesus for them. Just for an example.
And there are the big things. Good things. Worthy things that I want. I want to go to back to Africa. And fast. I want peace not just on earth but in my home, in my closest relationships. I want my third and fourth and maybe fifth books to be published.
See, good things. It’s big to want to go back to Africa…that’s very self-sacrificing of me. And it’s good to want peace in my home, because I want my children growing up as healthy as they can. And it’s worthwhile that I want my books published because I want to encourage people with my stories and point them to Jesus.
Unless, of course, I want to go back to Africa so I can tell people I’ve gone twice, because won’t that show my commitment to social justice and that I mean business and that I must love Jesus so much to go to Africa, let alone two whole times. And maybe I want peace in my home so I can have a little more peace and love for myself. And perhaps I want my third and fourth and fifth books published because, well, the first one might just have been a fluke, and the second one was me taking the bull by the horns, and I really, really want some external validation of my worth as a person, I mean, as a writer.
But even besides all that – all the right and not-so-right things I think I want and have no idea if I need and besides all the right and not-so-right motivations behind those things, there’s this lingering question that begs to be answered. That, frankly, is answered every day, all day, by each of my huge and tiny choices, that fills the slots of my mind that are marked with “now” and “today” and “urgent” and that is this: do I want Jesus more than I want any thing else?
I say that I want this. And I mean it when I say it. I want to want Jesus more than anything else. But my red flats and chunky sweaters and hoping a bit too much for a publisher tell me that I don’t. At least, not just yet.