Book Review: The Journey of Desire

"We are never living, but hoping to live; and whilst we are always preparing to be happy, it is certain, we never shall be so, if we aspire to no other happiness than what can be enjoyed in this life." Blaise Pascal

Even before I started reading The Journey of Desire, I had earnestly begun my own journey of desire. For the first time, perhaps, I was admitting my desires to God and asking what to do with them. I even wrote a poem about it back in February and a blog about it in March. I included the first half of the poem in that blog post, but here is the poem in its entirety:

Desire

In the Garden
To women came a curse
But pain is not the worst
Desire is your curse
For it is now directed
Toward the image
Of the man
That God has made
And not the God
Who beckons
From a home
We’ve never known

Desire
You are the flame
That can start a fire
Spreading quickly
Leaving scars
And open wounds
But when you die
You leave us cold
And looking for a new
Desire
You’re misdirected and confused
What do I do with you?

In the book The Journey of Desire, John Eldredge speaks to those who, like me, don’t know what to do with their desire. They have, perhaps, found themselves looking to idols to satisfy or have lost touch with desire altogether. He points out that our disillusionment after repeated heartbreak often results in denying our desires and setting up walls around them because we don’t want to be disappointed and hurt again. Sometimes we’re not even sure if it is OK to have desire—we think maybe we should kill it completely in order to live a holy life. We weigh whether we ought to be feeling this or that—whether it is OK to feel the way we do. So we bury our feelings because we don’t know what to do with them. But they’re still there, often feeding on idolatry. And frequently the message we hear in the Church is that we should fight against desire because it leads to sin. But living the Christian life isn’t about denying or burying the longings of our heart. The Christian life should be defined by passionate obsession.

“When we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.” C.S. Lewis

Eldredge places each of us in one of three categories. We are either:
1) longing—hungry and thirsty, alive
2) dead—having denied our desires or given up after so many disappointments
3) addicted—seeking temporary pleasures to fulfill our desires

My journey had taken me through categories 2 and 3. In the book, he describes the danger and subtlety in each of these—killing desire or giving ourselves over to false desire. He beautifully scatters quotes, Scripture, and poetry throughout the book to show this timeless and universal dilemma of desire, and how it is a result of the fact that this world is not our home—things aren’t as they were meant to be. We cannot find fulfillment in the things the world offers because we were made for something more. “What we have sought, what we have tasted in part with our earthly lovers, we will come face to face with in our True Love. For the incompleteness that we seek to relieve in the deep embrace of our earthly love is never fully healed.” But we all desire. Pretending we don’t desire results in “loss of soul, of communion with God, a loss of direction, and a loss of hope.”

Category 1 is where we need to be. Eldredge says we should embrace our desire—ask what is it that I want? “Don’t minimize it; don’t try to make sure it sounds spiritual; don’t worry about whether or not you can obtain it. Just stay with the question until you begin to get an answer. This is the way we keep current with our hearts.” I must admit, I did not know my heart—I’d been living out a script, acting on other’s expectations, disconnected with my own desires. The vulnerability of acknowledging my desires openly was a new reality for me. Trusting God with them, even more novel. “To live with desire is to choose vulnerability over self-protection; to admit our desire and seek help beyond ourselves is even more vulnerable. It is an act of trust.”

Based on different ideas from the book, I’ve begun a daily (and sometimes hourly) practice:
1) I acknowledge my desires to God as they arise,
2) I recognize they cannot ultimately be fulfilled in this life,
3) I remember that only God can provide true satisfaction and contentment,
4) I surrender the desire to God and ask Him to redirect it,
5) I stop striving and arranging,
6) I grieve,
7) I wait—for Home. And my hope grows in the waiting.


The results for me have been a new intimacy with God as I open up the hidden places of my heart to him and trust Him to satisfy me. The grieving restores my soul and brings healing. Also, I have experienced a shift in my desires and an increased hope for the coming wedding banquet with Christ that will bring ultimate fulfillment of the desire He has placed within me. I have less need to control and strive, knowing that the only One who can meet my needs is taking care of it. Lastly, I have a better sense of my own heart, without the baggage of oughts and expectations—I am free to feel for the first time in my life.

I’m reminded of the song “Lovesick” by Misty Edwards that I’ve been listening to over and over while reading this book, “And happy am I, to live a hungry life / And blessed am I, to thirst / Disillusionment, it is my gift within / I am blessed, I am blessed among men! … Try as I may to chase another Lover, / I find there is, there is no other / All the other Lovers fade away / Only YOU can satisfy.” Disillusionment with idols and all the things that don’t satisfy brings us to this place where we finally see “Only YOU can satisfy” and we long for what is real—what really satisfies. Disillusionment is my gift!