When God gave me everything I wanted...to show me all I would ever want is Him.

Growing up in church, I have always known that having idols in your heart was a bad thing. Because God commanded us to “love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deut 6:5), our hearts shall leave no room for idols. That part was okay to say out loud.

What I also believed, but didn’t like to say out loud, was that in order to protect me from myself, and my tendency to cling on to godless idol after godless idol, God should and would keep some things out of my reach. Good things. Things I deeply wanted. For my own good, of course. This line of thinking made me feel quite depressed. I never quite knew what to do with it, either. Because I've always felt like it’s right for me to be depressed by the world. I need to only seek God’s face, turn to gaze upon Jesus. His glory is the only thing worthy to propel me into action. Driving my day to day. Determining my decisions. Motivating my functioning.

Since the days of my youth, one thing I did deeply want was to be married. It’s hardly a unique desire, especially for a teenage girl. But I did find that I had to carefully curate my consumption of movies or books, to be helpful to myself. Nothing too romantic, or too compelling.

So when I liked a boy, a godly boy, no less, it was the opposite of helpful. The desire was threatening to spin out of control. I prayed a really difficult prayer. I prayed that I would desire only Jesus. That other things would pale in comparison. I even spoke to my Dad about remaining single forever - it seemed to me like the most logical option. I wanted something too much, so for my own good, God wouldn’t grant it to me, because He wanted me to taste deeper joys, in Him and Him alone.

To my absolute astonishment, soon after I prayed this prayer in earnest, it was revealed to me, over a series of events, that the boy I liked was also interested in me. It was his godliness, in fact, that attracted me to him. His obvious love for God. His passion for teaching and preaching God’s Word. His commitment to serve God with his whole life. His heart for mission. So how could I see this as anything other than God’s will for my life? I rejoiced in the opportunity to have laid out my heart under God, to have declared my commitment to Him, to show both Him and myself that I desire Christ most, but then to watch him give to me anyway the object of my desire. How merciful and kind is He!

As it turned out, my ‘trial’ would come, not in the form I expected (i.e. singleness), but through a different kind of pain. The boy and I started dating, and to my shock and despair, relationships ruptured - between us and our dearest friends. I was heartbroken by the community I thought I knew so well. Confusion and self-doubt plagued me for months, years even. I didn’t know how to find such a community elsewhere. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ever trust a friend again. I was so hurt I couldn’t pray. I couldn’t bring my hurts to God because my love for my Christian community was so entwined in my love for God. I hadn’t learned how to separate it. I neglected the means of grace. I stopped investing in listening well to teaching and pastoral help. I stopped spending time with the Lord in stillness and reading my Bible regularly. I turned inward, I turned towards my new romance. The relational strains were deeply painful but we had each other. Over a shamefully short period of time, my boyfriend knocked Jesus off His spot in my heart. My boyfriend became my husband. And my husband became the father to my children. My children joined him in that spot in my heart. The heart that was now practically void of Jesus. Of course, I would never have said this out loud. I never even realised it, or admitted it to myself.

The human experience of falling in love and becoming a mother are both such intensely beautiful and staggeringly joyous experiences. To me, they felt like other-worldly highs. When I hear stories of drugs and addiction - I have often thought that falling in love and having babies were the most comparable experiences in my own life.

I loved my husband so much, I wanted nothing more than to please him and make sure he was always pleased with me. Paradoxically, this was toxic for our marriage. I was always anxious, never at rest. It led to sorrow upon sorrow.

I loved my kids, more than my own life. Sacrifice was easy. I delighted in them. I didn’t think anyone could ever love as deeply as I did. I ran around and around, chasing after, revelling in and protecting these precious little idols of mine. I grew weary and fearful.

Let me tell you this: to my own eyes, I was living my ‘dream life’. It was all I ever wanted. In every way. In every way, but one: it did not soothe the ache in my heart. It did not quench my thirst. It did not bring me peace. There were glimmers, of course. God has always been kind to me. He was faithful when I was unfaithful. I was spiritually dying but by his grace, I wasn’t yet dead. I still knew in my mind that Jesus was my Lord, even though my heart was far, far away. In moments of sobriety, I knew this wasn’t enough. I wanted more. He is the Giver of life, the Giver of all good things, but these good things were empty without Himself. It’s like getting a sniff of something flowery and beautiful and never really getting to meet the source of the fragrance.

By His glorious grace alone and the power of the Spirit, I started praying prayers like this one:

Jesus, I want to be in love with you. I want to be excited by spending time with you. I want to be pumped to serve you. I want to be keen to share the news about you to others. I want to want to talk about you. Please Lord, shift the affections of my heart that they turn towards your face.

And by His glorious grace alone and the power of the Spirit, he started to answer my prayers.

I started to listen when a friend said that I had to ‘dethrone’ my husband and put Jesus back in his rightful place. I started to open up about the pains in my heart to a dear friend I met up with one-on-one. I started to find joy again in listening to God’s Word explained and proclaimed. I had forgotten how good the Lord tastes (Ps 34:8). Sweeter than milk and honey (Ps 119:103).

I realised with amazement that God did answer that prayer I prayed ten years ago. My prayer that I would only desire Jesus, and that everything else would pale in comparison. He’s been answering it slowly, but surely. He answered it as I walked through my personal wilderness (though to the outside world nothing about my life resembled a wilderness). He didn’t answer it in the way I expected: by keeping me from marriage and motherhood. He gave me everything I ever could have wanted. The deepest wants of my heart. I had my ‘godly’ husband, my healthy, easy, happy, hilarious kids. But he also showed me that these things pale in comparison to Himself. They were mere pointers, not the goal. In His kindness, he showed me that the most beautiful gifts taste like dirty water, when you seek to quench your thirst through it. Only Jesus can satisfy the longings of the soul.

I love this old hymn. The truth of it rarely fails to bring me to tears:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in his wonderful face

And the things on earth

Will grow strangely dim

In the light of his glorious grace