Am I Allowed to Want?

What do I want?

The problem is, I don't know.

Somewhere along the way, I became very good at asking what God wanted from me. What my family needed from me. What the next responsible step was.

But when I try to answer the question, "What do I want?" I find myself strangely silent.

And I wonder if part of the reason is that I've spent much of my Christian life being suspicious of desire itself.

Somewhere along the way, I absorbed the message that desire itself was dangerous. Desires were things to be suspicious of. They were lustful, selfish, worldly. To want too much was a sign of immaturity. To deny what I wanted felt more spiritual.

In some ways, it's easy to see where this idea comes from.

The Bible opens with a story about desire. Eve desired the forbidden fruit. It was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom. She reached for what God had not given her, and the consequences were devastating.

Years later, David stood on a rooftop and saw Bathsheba. He desired her. That desire led to adultery, deception, and eventually murder.

Again and again, Scripture gives us examples of desire gone wrong. So it's not hard to see how many of us arrive at the conclusion that the safest thing to do is suppress our desires altogether.

But lately I've been wondering if I've drawn the wrong conclusion.

Maybe the problem isn't desire itself. Maybe the problem is desire disconnected from God.

Cancer has a way of forcing questions to the surface. Some of those questions are practical. I've overhauled my already-not-terrible diet. I don't touch refined sugar, processed foods, dairy, or red meat. I focus on high-fiber meals, organic vegetables, and wild-caught salmon. I walk every day and have started lifting weights.

Those changes have been hard, but in some ways they've been easier than the mental work. The mental work has been asking harder questions.

Questions like: What do I want?

It sounds simple, but for me it isn't.

After years of trying to be faithful, serving others, doing the next right thing, and laying down my own preferences, I've realized I don't always know how to answer that question.

Am I allowed to want things?

Is it selfish to dream?

Is it sinful to desire?

Then I come to Psalm 37:4:

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."

That verse almost feels surprising. The Lord wants to give me my desires?

I think the key is in the first half of the verse. Delight yourself in the Lord. Not ignore your desires. Not suppress your desires. Not pretend you don't have them. Delight yourself in the Lord.

When our hearts are rooted in Him, something begins to happen. Our desires are shaped by His presence. We start wanting different things. The desires of our hearts slowly become aligned with the desires of His heart.

And maybe that's why dreams matter.

For someone like me, dreams awaken something. They bring life and energy. They make me pay attention. They make me want to get out of bed in the morning. They stir creativity and hope.

I've often thought of dreaming as something slightly indulgent. Something I should hold at arm's length.

But what if some dreams are invitations? What if some desires are clues? What if He placed those dreams within us, knowing we were the unique being created to carry it out?

What if God is not merely interested in what He wants from us, but also in what He has placed within us?

And I wonder if there is another cost to stuffing our desires.

What happens to a desire when we refuse to acknowledge it? Where does it go?

I'm not sure it simply disappears.

I've spent much of this year learning that our bodies are not separate from the rest of us. We aren't minds floating around in bodies. We are integrated beings. What affects the soul affects the body, and what affects the body affects the soul.

When I continually silence a desire without ever bringing it into the light, I don't think I fool my body into believing it was never there. The desire goes somewhere. Maybe it settles into a stiffness in my neck. Maybe it becomes the low hum of anxiety I can't quite explain. Maybe it shows up as exhaustion, irritability, or a vague sense that I've somehow lost touch with myself.

I don't think God asks us to pretend we don't want things.

I think He invites us to bring our desires to Him.

To hold them honestly.

To examine them.

To let Him prune what is unhealthy and awaken what is good.

Because I've noticed something else.

When I begin to pay attention to those deeper desires—the ones that seem rooted in who God created me to be—I don't feel more anxious.

I feel more alive.

When I make space for writing, beauty, creativity, connection, and dreams, something releases inside of me. There is a lightness. An energy. A sense of alignment.

It's as though my soul is finally exhaling.

And perhaps this is where I've misunderstood desire all these years.

Because Jesus Himself had desires.

He desired fellowship with His disciples. He desired to gather Jerusalem to Himself "as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings." In the garden of Gethsemane, He expressed His desire that the cup of suffering might pass from Him. Yet in the same breath, He surrendered that desire to the Father.

Not my will, but yours be done.

Jesus did not pretend He had no desires. He brought them honestly before God.

Maybe that is the model.

Not denying what we want.

Not allowing our desires to rule us.

But bringing them into relationship with the One who made us.

Perhaps the goal of the Christian life is not becoming a person who wants nothing.

Perhaps it is becoming a person whose desires are increasingly shaped by love.

A person who delights in the Lord and, in doing so, discovers that the desires of their heart are being transformed.

For years, I've been more comfortable asking, "What does God want from me?"

Lately, I've been learning to ask another question:

What has God placed within me?

Because maybe some desires were never meant to be suppressed.

Maybe they were invitations.

Maybe they were clues.

Maybe they were part of the way God was leading me all along.