Living a Fulfilled Life with Unfulfilled Desires

Is it possible?

It’s my lot in life. The thorn in my side. My Achilles heel. My Delilah. My stumbling block that that I pray will lead to my strength (when His power is made perfect in my weakness). Would that I could escape this. Give this burden to someone else to carry. Choose a different path for my life. It’s too much for me to carry. I’m sinking under the weight of it. A good friend wrote me an e-mail a couple of months ago that describes exactly how my heart feels:

"I don't quite know how I got here and I don't quite know how to get out. I feel like a drowning person in the middle of the ocean. I will keep fighting to my dying breath but that doesn't mean I will succeed. In fact I am afraid that I am losing ground and will soon drown altogether. I need the Lord to bring a change. For I know some of the good things I could do to help myself but I have lost the strength to do them. I feel as though I have let you down. Like I am a great disappointment to you, my family, and others. I fear that somehow that spark of something great I always thought I had inside has faded out altogether. I wonder how my story will end."

I also wonder, how will my story end? I don’t know how I got here and I don’t quite know how to get out. It’s like I’m trapped and will not be set free until I see my Savior face to face.

For years I’ve cried out to the Lord regarding this “thorn.” I haven’t understood why He would bother to create me with this desire, if it was never to be fulfilled. I’ve asked Him why. I’ve blamed Him and been angry at Him. It’s always seemed to me that I would be much more effective in my walk and steadfast in my devotion to Him if I wasn’t distracted by this. So far, He still hasn’t explained to me why. And neither has He taken the desire away. I read something by Elisabeth Elliot one morning that gave me some insight I’ve never seen before.

“Ordinary fare will not fill the emptiness in our hearts. Bread will not suffice. We need extraordinary fare. We need manna. How else will we learn to eat, if we are never hungry? How will we educate our tastes for heavenly things if we are surfeited with earthy? Sex simply will not suffice anymore than bread will. My heart was saying, ‘Lord, take away this longing, or give me that for which I long.’ The Lord was answering, ‘I must teach you to long for something better.’”

Lord, teach me to long for something better.