Happily Ever After
Why the Longing Persists
Happily Ever After.
It’s a dream that is born in us from our earliest of memories. Nearly all of us have the desire to meet that special someone and marry ourselves to them - the hope of joy, completeness, and dreams coming true.
The concept seems to haunt our hearts with its promise of ultimate belonging. It tantalizes us with a hope we cannot deny and don't want to live without. The belief that all will be right with the world following that one epic day. The great struggle to find love will have ended and we will be enveloped in a mysterious, enchanting cloud. Bliss, like a cloud, will carry us up into the ecstasies of endless joy. The curtain falls; “The End” is written. There’s no need to see any more, to tell any more of the story. We all know what follows. It is the most thrilling phrase ever imagined by my fellow imaginers: “And they lived happily ever after.”
I’m not convinced we never outgrow the enchantment of that idea. Sometimes our “happily ever afters” have fallen far short of our ideals. Reality blows away our blissful cloud and breaks the spell. We wake up to find that our “happily ever after” is being encroached on by some pretty disturbing unhappinesses.
We find that cloud nine makes for a shockingly unstable dwelling place. Why didn’t anyone tell us that you can’t live on clouds? You fall right through them just like the rest of the sky! And as gravity kicks in and we find ourselves hurtling to earth at a nauseating speed, we begin to question: “Why am I falling? Why does everyone else seem to get away with living on clouds? Is it my fault I’m falling? What is wrong with me that I’m experiencing pain? What happened to my ‘happily ever after’?”
Hopefully, you’ve realized by now that you are not alone. Reality strikes everyone. Bumps, pains, and even tragedies come to call on every one of us.
Still the question remains: Why would we be given such a desire if it were impossible to achieve? Surely such a core belief, a universal hope, has a more powerful driving force behind it than just fairy tale writers. Such a basic human desire must have a purpose. It must point to something deeper.
And indeed, it does. I believe it represents the human condition. It is a need for belonging. It is the need to be known completely and still loved unconditionally.
Unmet Needs
Those of you who had this need met early in life probably don't even recognize the need. In our finite-minded human state, we generally only notice things when they are lacking. We usually see what we don't have and fail to recognize what we do have.
Yet for whatever reason, I, and many others like me, feel we don't belong and thus undertake the search for someplace, sadly any place, to belong. And even if the desire to belong was met in your earthly family, I'm guessing you still continue to have the need to belong within the context of your experience as a child of your loving heavenly Father.
There are so many things in this world that promise us a place of belonging. They promise to fill a hole within our souls that we all keenly sense. Yet they all fall far short of what we deeply feel should be attainable.
We long for that place of fully knowing and being fully known – and though known inside and out – loved in spite of ourselves. But in our fallen world, complete exposure and unconditional love rarely meet. No matter where or in whom we seek to find that place of intimacy in this decaying world, it cannot be found. The good news is that it does exist. It is not outside our reach but knocking at the door. Jesus is our place of being known.
No matter how accepting your family of origin was, they cannot completely meet such an overwhelming need. Each of us has a nearly gravitational pull, urging us toward what can make us whole. And yet, unlike inanimate objects, we have the ability and tendency to deny the pull and seek out less fulfilling sources that tantalize us with empty pledges of wholeness.
How many of us have held grudges against parents who could never live up to our needs? How many have sought the mirage of popularity and friendship that has disappointed time after time? How many of us have given ourselves over to faulty and incomplete forms of love that seem to have the answers for our lonely souls? How many have sought fulfillment in money, prestige, beauty, academia, alcohol, drugs?
The Longing Fulfilled
Each of us has a nearly gravitational pull, urging us toward what can make us whole. And yet, we seek out less fulfilling sources that tantalize us with empty pledges of wholeness. But why would a loving Father create us with a hole in our hearts that causes such longings that we seek to fill it with painful things? How can this be considered loving? #ChristianBlog #KnowingGod #HearingGod
A God-given longing must have a God-given fulfillment. The problem comes when we believe the answer will come in human form. It cannot. No human can satisfy this hunger. No human is perfect enough. For the perfect “happily ever after” ending, we need a Perfect Partner.
God has given us this desire in our heart and though we run to other things, He is always waiting there to show us that He is the only truly qualified answer for the need. He is the Source of the hunger and He is what fills it. It has all been ordained that we should long for a Grand Romance. And, believe me, this Romance is beyond what you ever imagined.
As a young girl I was always on the lookout for my own knight in shining armor to come riding on his white steed and take me away to where I'd never again feel the pain of rejection. My confidence would blossom into full bloom as I'd become his wise and capable love. Little did I know that my true Prince was pursuing me and all I had to do was open my spiritual eyes to see Him. He had planned our love story since before I was born and He longed to give me that much sought after place: That place of belonging.
But at that time, I thought He was so distant, like Someone I'd seen only misty images of but never could quite make out. And though I had given my heart to Him, I never imagined He desired to be closer and more real to me than any human being could ever be. I never realized His longing for me was stronger than my desire to be known.
I never realized He was the Source and the Fulfillment of my dreams of love and belonging. That desire to be known fully and to know another was planted in me by Him and He would incessantly cultivate that desire until it blossomed, first into friendship, then into love, then into intimacy with Him.
It seemed that all my life I was waiting for a knight in shining armor to ride to me on his white steed. All my life, I knew he would come and rescue me. All my life I felt he was just around the corner. But I was wrong. My true Hero wasn’t on His way – He was right there beside me, waiting for me to turn and see that He was already there … all my life.
Why am I Like This?
But why would a loving Father God create us with a hole in our hearts that causes such longings that we seek to fill it with painful things? How can this be considered loving?
When studying the Word of God, it is important to always look at original intent. “Original intent” is the purpose and plan God had when He first created, before human interference twisted, manipulated or contaminated that purpose in our thinking. And, very often, the Garden of Eden is where we find God's original intent, His perfect plan, for the people and things He created.
When mankind was created in the Garden, he was created in the context of relationship. When God created man, the relationship between Himself and man was perfect; there were no flaws, no imperfections. God and man had a relationship of peace, completely devoid of conflict.
Not only was man created in the context of relationship, he was created for relationship. As fish were created to frolic in water and mountain goats were created to attain great heights and the buffalo was created to roam the plains, mankind was created to bask in the daily enjoyment of an intimate relationship with his Creator. It is the environment we were made for.
Of course, the Fall changed all of that. In the Fall, mankind joined the Satanic rebellion against God and, as the brokenness rebellion causes infected our hearts, our ability to relate with God was the supreme thing that was damaged.
However, the need for intimacy with the Creator that was so perfectly met previously was not lost at the Fall. We each acquired a vital need for connection that had been embedded in our very nature from creation. However, we also inherited brokenness from our ancestors after the Fall which has inhibited our ability to meet that vital need.
We inherited the fear of exposure. Just like Adam and Eve, we are still creating fig leaf garments for ourselves, figuratively speaking. We still put up our false facades and pretend to not be pitifully naked and ashamed behind them.
We also inherited a desire to hide. No matter how much we cover up, we still fear the vulnerability of exposure and it causes us to hide away. As Adam and Eve hid from God when they heard the sound of Him walking in the Garden, we still hide from Him, somehow imagining that if we ignore Him, He will ignore us. We also hide from one another.
The fear of exposure and the desire to hide, have their roots in our fear of rejection. Why do we run away when the hands of mercy are extended? We fear rejection. We know that if the God of the universe rejects us, there is nothing left for us. So, as if to ensure that will not happen, we never give Him the chance to reject us. Meanwhile, the need for intimacy persists. #LifeQuotes
These partnering impulses, the fear of exposure and the desire to hide, have their roots in our fear of rejection. Why are we afraid? Why do we cover up? Why do we run away when the hands of mercy are extended? We fear rejection. We know that if the God of the universe, our Creator, rejects us, there is nothing left for us. So, as if to ensure that will not happen, we never give Him the chance to reject us and spend our effort hiding to avoid the fear that is at the core of all other fears: rejection.
Meanwhile, the need for intimacy persists. Like a hole in our hearts left gaping and empty from the tearing away of the Fall, the emptiness we feel without God now acts as a homing device. It is the means by which our Father beckons us home to Him. Our hearts are calling out for Him and all the while we try to fill it with other things. Much to our dismay, nothing else fits, or fits for long. Friends, family, careers, loves. There is nothing in creation that can fill this hole. Only the Creator is the match for our need.
“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Psalm 63:1
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Also, to read an intimate story of how God showed me His great compassion, read the blog titled, “Why Did Jesus Weep” by clicking HERE!