reaching for Eden

Headlines scream the unthinkable; trauma and terror splash across the canvas of our otherwise routine lives. We are left gasping at the shock of it all. Perhaps the latest disaster struck some other community this time, but imagination stirs our empathy, bringing it uncomfortably close to home. Barely a day escapes without some grim reminder of the world’s brokenness. Each new tragedy chips away at our peace, tempting us to give way to despair.

Surely even the most faith-filled among us has lifted up that agonizing cry: It isn’t supposed to be like this!

That’s true, you know. This isn’t how things were meant to be; our hearts were not made to break.

paradise lost

Way back in Paradise Lost, God created the first hearts whole and pure and true. The first Man and Woman had spirits alive to the Divine, made to seek and know unbroken communion with their Creator. And each was endowed with a sacred trust—free will—to ensure they might both give and receive love freely: not coerced, but of their own blissful choice.

Yet with that blessed gift, our all-knowing Father allowed a vulnerability. Hearts free to choose Him, to choose one another, could also choose against. And so, tragically, they did. The very first temptation led swiftly to rejection, betrayal, denial. This original sin of unbelief drove its shaft deep into the heart of God, and hearts have been breaking ever since.

No, Beloved, this is not how it is supposed to be. This is not the life God created us to live.

Every day that we wake up, we feel it: the not-right-ness of this world we’ve come to call home. It threads through sleepless nights and endless strings of mundane moments. It is present in war zones and dark alleys, school shootings and church scandals. We hear its echo in wailing sirens and grim prognoses and final goodbyes. It can even cast a shadow over moments of joy.

Something writhing within us cries out for God to intervene.

Couldn’t He stop this? Change things? Make things RIGHT?!?

He could. He is. He will. 

But rarely does it look the way we expect …

wrestling with an inner emptiness

This creeping disquiet, this sense of not-right-ness, stirs deep beneath the surface. We don’t need a garish headline to convince us we’ve left Paradise far behind. The awareness is as close as our own unfulfilled longings …

• The forsaken wife, whose husband’s neglect has killed her love for him, leaving her too numb to fight for what they once shared …
• The single woman, whose sweetest dream was marriage and babies, lives alone and growing older, wondering if she’s been forgotten …
• The grieving widow, holding her babies as they cry themselves to sleep missing their daddy, aching to feel him holding her again …

The outward signs are there: broken relationships, missed opportunities, a glaring absence, dreams unrealized. Still, all these are but symptoms of a more profound lack.

If only …

core confessions

I have spent most of my life reaching after something more. Whether an accolade or stamp of approval, a new pursuit or challenge or location, there was always something out there that seduced me with its promise of fulfillment. Yet even the thrill of my achievements quickly faded, and I came face to face again with the core desires of my heart: marriage and ministry.

Neither of these is an unworthy dream, and I was convinced I held them with the best of intentions. A godly marriage would reflect the love of Christ for His bride; a thriving ministry would stir and grow hearts for the Kingdom.

But years passed, even decades, and these most cherished hopes failed to materialize. No fairytale romance, no ring, no babies; no flashy website, book contract, or ministry platform.

All this time, God, I’ve been trying to tell You how I would choose to reflect Your glory. I have begged You to deliver the kind of life I thought would bring me fulfillment, insisting my motives were pure. But You, knowing me better, have thwarted me at every turn.

Can I still believe that You are good?

Can I still trust You with my heart?

I’ve always thought I knew what I wanted, what would bring me joy: marriage, family, ministry. But maybe what I’ve really wanted all along—

—is You.

the dream and the reality

My God has buried me deep in a rural public school, laboring in the midst of a broken system and ever-changing expectations. In this rarely quiet sacred space, I have read story after story, exchanged countless hugs and high-fives with little people, and prayed and laughed and cried with my fellow warriors in the trenches.

God has knitted me into a tiny, vibrant tribe of Jesus-lovers—teaching and humbling and uplifting me—rubbing my rough edges up against theirs, patiently refining us all.

And, through my rare yet poignant ventures into love and romance, He has peeled back painful layers of self-protection, exposing raw sores to His healing breath and light, all without bringing the resolution that I sought.

Will it ever feel like enough?

return to paradise

I can protest that I still would have managed to love the Lord if my story had played out the way I wanted; surely His grace could have allowed me to navigate earthly bliss while keeping my “first love” intact. Yet, in living out His version of the narrative, I cannot deny an intimate awareness of my own need. Here, I am profoundly familiar with my own weakness. Numbing the ache of my restless desires, attempting to reach for shoddy substitutes, only works for a moment. Instead, I am learning to invite God to stir my longings by His Spirit, pressing through the pain into greater dependence upon Him.

Whatever the next chapters of His love story with me hold, I know I will be ever reaching for Eden. My Lover—my Lord—will keep me thirsty, desperate to drink from His living well. He will reveal my emptiness, prodding the hole that only He can fill, drawing me to seek His heart. As I hear the earth groan and its people cry out for a Savior, so I, too, will once more lift my hands to the only One who satisfies.

And one day, Paradise will come again.