11.12 // Hunger

Right now, I should be making dinner.
But I am sitting by the front window and watching the birds at the feeder instead.

I count about twelve of them— sparrows or finches, I think— all speckled brown and full of winter down. They look like brown leaves drifting in the new white snow. I lean in to get a better look at their markings, to better identify them, but they hear me from inside the bay window. In a great whooshing migration, they fly off.
But only for a moment. Within a minute they are back— pecking at the suet, hovering for a turn, searching the snow below for anything that dropped in the feathered frenzy.

Yes, watching the birds is much more appealing than making shepherd’s pie.

Here is a moment for examen.
Always begin with gratitude:
For beauty and birds
For sleepy babies cuddled warm inside when outside is just a gust
For two kiddos giggling at Junie B. Jones in their bunk beds

And I look up and there is Benson, his ankles and wrists grown a full two inches out of his clothes, a string bean with a crooked smile. And he is hungry. Again.

Several bananas later, he is content, and I remember the examen. And I remember my own hunger.

The birds and the boy point to the hunger in me, the desire in me.
And the good, generous Father never turns us away.
He never sends us off empty handed.

Over the past few months, I have pondered human desire, wrestling the Christian paradox of contentment and holy longing. It takes wisdom to know if, in each given circumstance, we are called to find peace and rest with where we are, who we are, and what we are given, and when our sacred duty is to strive and work and press on.

When is hunger a devouring consumption and when is it a scared longing and desire?
Is my hunger to control what I eat because I feel better eating certain foods in a particular way? Or is this approach to food a matter of manipulating my body or buying into culture’s “fat phobia” or a symbol of status?
Is my hunger to have a clean home so we can live healthier, less stressful, and more hospital lives in our given space? Or is this an issue of control and keeping up appearances, pushing our real mess into the closets?
And even this— is my hunger to write a share fueled by passion and growth and defeating fear? Or is writing another venture of pride and self-promotion?
That last one has kept me guessing for several years now.
I designed this website last October and am just now feeling the release to try. And its a strange, nerve-wrecking feeling. To lean into desire and trust it. The whole venture has been a tightrope walk, balancing between fear, criticism, and joy.

On nights like tonight, when the weather calls us inside and the energy from summer dissipates and we are left with just ourselves, I wonder if we desire not nearly enough.
Have we heard phrases like “desires of the flesh” or “lust for the world” or “carnal nature” so, so often, that we fear longing? Have we bred a subculture that believes that all deep want or deep desire leads to some kind of sin? Or, even worse, will desire somehow leave us wanting still, unsatisfied? What if God disappoints us?

I find that I have to be brave to desire good things.
I have to really long for goodness and not fear being turned away or disapproved of or considered unworthy.
Instead of letting my soul grow numb or fall asleep, I try to find a mustard seed of courage and let it hope and hunger for the Real.

When I was anticipating giving birth to John Taylor, I had a lot of anxiety. I worried about my body after surgery. I worried about complications for the baby or for my family. I would stay up late thinking about the cold, sterile table and the blue curtain and being opened up in that operating room all while being fully awake.
As much as I longed for a more natural birth and less complications and more birthing options and better support, I knew that none of those things were really possible.
In my given life, in my given circumstance, what I really longed for was peace.

I started asking this question: What would birth be like if I wasn’t afraid?
At first, I couldn’t imagine being unafraid. I have been afraid for so long about so many things, and I hide it so well— I could not fathom walking into the hospital with peace— let alone joy.

I started praying for it though. I started imagining it. In times of contemplation, I imagined holding John Taylor without fearing pain or fearing the long recovery or fearing how the rest of my family would cope.

And out of that imagining, I let myself long for real joy, real love, real presence even in that operating room.
I let myself really desire it— to really long for a holy, sacred experience birthing my little boy.

And so when the morning of August 8th arrived, I witnessed a small miracle.
After working through a few hiccups (like passing out on the operating table), I found a steady breath. I entered that sacred place within, where I’ve kept that secret longing like a deep, deep well, and I found peace.
And for the first time in so long, I was truly unafraid.
I laid there under those fluorescent lights and heard the beeping and felt the tugging, but I breathed and smile at Jackson.
And in a short while, I held John Taylor and was present there. I loved and I felt real joy.

During my hospital stay, I realized that fear is often our greatest deterrent from truly longing.
And consequently, a life full of fear and void of longing, isn’t really life at all, is it?

If we are honest, we do not really let ourselves desire real, deep, true things because we fear those hungers will be left unmet.
And I’m not talking about Christmas wish longing or shooting star longing or fame longing.
No, I think real longing, at the core, is to live in the divine.
We long for Fruits of the Spirit— to love and be loved, to experience rich, beautiful joy, to live at peace.
We long for healing— in our lives, in our families, in our marriages, even with ourselves.
We long for resurrection— to know that nothing is ever really gone; that life really is bubbling under the surface.
We long to see God— and that when we see Him, we will actually know ourselves, too. These two revelations are inseparable.

C.S. Lewis famously comments on thus very thing, advocating for great, strong hunger in the face of an anemic world that settles for unrealities in the face of God:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
(Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”)

As usual, I have no answers when it comes to leaning into our deep desire. But, I do have questions.
In moments of reflection, I try to ask, pray, and imagine in this way:
What do I want in this moment? Can I give it a word, a name? How would I describe it in language?
Now, desire more, desire deeper. What do I really want?
And I imagine that my heart is a well and I let myself sink deeper and deeper and deeper into it.

And what I find most often is that when I finally sink as far into my hunger as I can go, I land on holy ground.
We don’t have to fear desire.
We don’t have to tell others to “want less.”
No, if we urge one another to desire more and more and more, we will find that we always identify our hunger for the Sacred, for Love, for Truth, for Life.

The examen is one tool that helps me do this regularly.
It is like a spiritual check-up all throughout the day, identifying where I am grateful, where I long, where I am numb or afraid and therefore cease to desire and live.
And beginning the practice with gratitude reminds me that desiring deeply does not necessarily despise my here-and-now. Longing for deep peace and unity with God and myself and this world does not mean despising the noise and monotony of right now.
Thankfully, Kingdom economics don’t work this way.
More desire does not mean less contentment.
More longing does not mean less joy and celebration now.
More ache does not mean less gratitude.

As I write down these thoughts, Olivia comes out and places her warm head in my hands, and I know it is a fever. Sickness is often a trigger for my deepest anxiety. I can’t control it, stop it, fully prevent it, or know how it will run its course. With a new baby in the house, I feel my body tense up. I can feel fear strangle my breaths.
But, I remember the examen and hunger, and I allow myself to release fear— fear of terrible disease, of a sick baby, of the worst of the worst happening.

And I begin to desire, to hunger.
I pray for her healing, for her rest, for a quick recovery. And then, as I sink into the well of my real desire, I know that what I really want is to be safe and not alone— even in sickness. That even if the worst happens, I am not abandoned or unloveable. That God is near and working and present even in this.

Tonight, before bed, Olivia and I recall the parable we studied during children’s church on Sunday. The one where Jesus tells the people not to worry because He feeds the birds.
And I am thankful he says “do not to worry,” rather than, “do not be hungry.”
No, the hunger really is sacred.

So I tuck her in early, I too hunger for more of God here and now, more wholeness to see myself as He does, and more of His grace to live in these moments fully alive in Him.
And I trust that just as He feeds the birds, He will sustain me, too.