Heavenly discontent and divine addiction

I see a majestic house, hundreds of years old, still standing and holding life today even while it speaks of a time when elegance, grace, and honor were a part of daily life.

I see a maple perfectly suspended in that moment of fall fullness when its colors are so brilliantly alive but only a handful of leaves have drifted to cover the frozen grass beneath.

I hear a strain of music that, at the same time, takes away and gives back my breath.

I smell winter in the air for the first time, whispers of frost and cinnamon and pine and crisp, frozen brilliance even before it arrives in full.

I read a wholesome, brown-bread love story about old-fashioned honor and pursuit and values and patience and virtue and reward.

I sit inside, warm, safe, and surrounded by comfort while looking at rugged, age-old hills dusted with snow and wrapped around with clouds.

And my heart swells and I feel an urgency to breathe it all in, to gather it and save it and savor it before the moment is gone, and yet I am never quite quenched before the fleeting sensation flickers and slips out of my fingers, and I am left hungry. Deliciously hungry. Rightly hungry. Heavenly discontent.

"If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." -C.S. Lewis

Some days, I try desperately and repeatedly and in vain to be quenched now, within the confines of what this world can offer. Other days, I place all my hopes in things just beyond my reach: when I go to Africa, when I am married, when I have children... But these days, I embrace it. I breathe it in and let it fill me for a moment and remind me of my emptiness, meant to be filled by something so much greater. I take the wistful bursting of my heart and I turn to the One who both satisfies and stirs the hunger. The One who meets every need and every desire, but gives it back again, stronger, with a promise to meet it again. The One who overflows my heart and grows it and overflows it again.

I enter willingly into the cycle. An addiction? Sure, but if I'm going to be a slave to something, let it be the Creator of every beautiful sensation and the giver of every good gift. If I'm going to worship and depend on something, let it be the One who promises and performs, never giving a desire that He will not, one day, satisfy completely. May I never run from the Lover to the gift He has given, but instead appreciate the gift for what it is and enjoy it from the comfort of the arms of Love Himself. May I make my home in His arms and live from that place long before I go there at the end of this little life.