oxygen

Meeting with Steve and allowing him to engage me in conversation over struggles stemming from my past became the threshold across which further steps toward freedom could eventually pass. Professional counseling became a game-changer to my health. mental – spiritual – emotional. In time my shackles of fear and shame would begin loosening their grip.

Getting episodes of trauma and emotional dysfunction brought out into the light of day meant exposing more than one blind spot. Contrary to some prevailing assumptions, us Christian folks can collect and harbor blind spots along with the best of them. It is true of me.

Over time, the Lord helped me see just how skewed my understanding was of the religious term, ‘Christian Ministry’. Christ’s building of his church, for instance, pushes forward through the contributions of a marvelous and diverse array of loving servants – Counseling clinicians being counted among them.

My session with Steve that day, and others following, signaled the first of many welcoming inhalings of oxygen to this set of weary lungs.

Throughout my younger formative years, I had drawn assumptions about various vocations and professions. A number of these notions got shown over time to be things falling far short of reality.

My religious upbringing had (with no actual intention I’m sure) conditioned me in some instances to ways of thinking that weren’t often helpful. This developed, for example, attitudes that diminished or even discarded any notion that the social sciences could – or should – be considered useful. Particularly in relation to believers, i.e. the Church.

The infusion of a transformative life, I was discovering, can come to us packaged (as with the natural element we call oxygen) inside a curious hodgepodge of vessels. Stepping from the counseling session I drew in a deep breath. The gait in my walk seemed quickened.

Desire comes with being human.

The moment I launched as a newborn – right from the birth canal – I fought for air. Nothing going forward in life would ever trump the urgency of this one desire. Once my hunger for oxygen was met and my lungs were assured that there was more on the way, a second desire was born. I craved food.

And once I gulped in my first samplings of milk – catching it’s flavor and texture – my infant body had no problem calling for seconds. And anytime the beverage I craved for thereafter was out of reach, I knew it. No one needed to convince me. Like James Dashner wrote*.

“I felt her absence. It was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth. you wouldn’t need to run to the mirror to know they were gone”

I write this sitting in a bagel shop next to a couple making conversation.

“What would you say is your passion?” she asked.

The guy’s response sounded muffled due to the Christmas music streaming through my ear buds. That didn’t matter. Her question, though, did matter. It matters to us all, What would you say is your passion?

Of the many desires, hungers, passions that surface in our lives, none trumps something we might call the desire of the heart. We may come to know what it is our heart desires or we may not know.

But every heart desires one thing in common, a thing that is not tangible. Something deep. Grand and even eternal. What we so hunger is real – the most real thing ever – even though it could seem elusive.

We yearn for eternity. And the Being behind it. C. S. Lewis gives us an insight,

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

Desirables on this planet crowd the avenues of our lives, forming an endless parade. We feel the magnetic pull toward some attractions more than others. A few may inspire and energize us. We sample the object we’re drawn to and it feels right. An appetite, or desire, can carry such a pull that sensory language must be employed to capture its power. Athletes savor the taste of victory or suffer a bitter defeat.

My Norwegian friend, Oddvar Naustvik found a stirring of desire and nurtured it. Oddvar wanted to successfully compete in an iron-man triathlon.

Another friend, Robello Samuel of India, pursued his desire – to gain expertise in the field of drilling wells.

From the time Cody Stinnett could tap his foot to the rhythm of music he yearned to excel as a percussionist.

Still another friend, young Elizabeth Miles, longed to tackle and master a language.

Each desire is lofty, some even noble. How attractive still is the hungering after ‘another world’, as Lewis suggests. The world for which we’re most rightly suited.

Such desire is withheld from noone. Curious thought. The sensory language of scripture invites,

Taste and see.

Tag: oxygen

Desire