The Beauty of Longing

On the hidden gifts the pain of absence brings into our lives

Longing (noun) — a yearning desire, especially for something unattainable or distant.

In all the stories within my Christian faith tradition, God is described as whole and complete within God’s Self. There is nothing missing in God, so the scripture’s teach. There is nothing lacking or broken or out of place. And yet, those same scriptures also teach that God is full of longing. It is strange to think of longing as something a perfect Being would do. Most Christian notions of God’s perfection imply a deep completeness. God is self-sustaining. God needs nothing. God lacks nothing.

And yet God longs.

I’ve been wondering lately what to make of this.

I think God longs because He loves. More specifically, I think God longs because He is love, and it is the nature of love to long for the Beloved.

Just read the Song of Songs. #Lovelongs.

In my work as a coach, my clients come with lots of longings. They desire, and that’s a beautiful thing to me, a necessary and vibrant expression of the human soul. To desire is a signal that your heart is alive, that it wants something. To long for something is to be awake. It’s only when you’ve given up longing that you begin to die.

But it is also true that longing is painful. It hurts, often very deeply. Longing reminds us of what’s not here right now, what’s not being satisfied in the deep places of our hearts. Longing is the great ache that threatens to consume us.

And because we (in the West, particularly) have been taught to believe that all pain is a signal that something is wrong, we often believe our longings are selfish or dangerous, or that we are bad or in danger if we indulge them. So folks come to me as a coach and hold up their longing and they say, “I need a way to get rid of this pain. I either want to fulfill this longing right now or kill it for good.”

But what if the longing itself is a part of becoming who you are meant to be?

What if longing is a part of what it means to be in love…I mean, literally, to live in love?

When you look at a stunning mountain view, or the ocean at sunset, sometimes the beauty of it all makes you ache inside. Something inside you longs for something “over there” in that beauty. You’ve experienced this, yes?

“We do not want merely to see beauty…we want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” — C.S. Lewis

There’s nothing broken about that. Nothing that needs to be fixed. That sort of longing is beautiful. It makes you beautiful.

In fact, I believe that all longing, when it comes from a deep, true place, is like that. It makes you beautiful.

Just ponder that one for a minute: Your longing makes you beautiful.

Don’t hear me wrong. I’m committed to helping people fulfill their longings. Few things in life bring me more joy. But before you judge your longing as selfish or dangerous or a waste of time, you might want to consider how the longing itself may be shaping you into something more astonishing and beautiful and vibrantly alive than you’ve ever been.

One day the great saint Julian of Norwich was pouring out her heart to God. She was longing. And God met her there and said to her, “I am the ground of thy beseeching.” In modern words, “I am the ground of your longing.”

What if the very instant you begin to pray your true longing, you’ve already come into the heart of God’s presence? What if the very longing you are avoiding is the gateway to the Divine Presence, and to becoming all God ever dreamed you would be?

Yes, I know: Longing makes you vulnerable. It hurts, deeply. It makes you feel weak. Helpless, even. If you’ve ever loved anything, you know this. If you’ve ever loved anyone who didn’t love you back, then you really know it.

But don’t be afraid. You’re in good company.

Because God longs, too.

Which means God is vulnerable, too. Not just in some vague, academic sense. God is vulnerable to you. Your longing impacts God … because God loves you … because God is love.

Imagine!

God is always longing right there alongside you.

When our longing becomes this sacred communion with the Divine, there’s no telling what wonders of beauty may arise from the ache of that absence.

Don’t be afraid of the pain of your longing.

Lean in. Seek God in the ache. Seek the hidden gifts of those dark places.