The Unwavering Intensity of Desire
07/11/2009

I am haunted by the stories of people who make the summit of Everest. Such incredible devotion is required, such total focus of body, soul, and spirit. Reaching the top of the world’s tallest mountain becomes for those who try the central driving force of their lives. The goal is so remarkable and the journey so uncertain. Many climbers have been lost on the mountain. Those who reach the summit and return safely are among a rare and elite group of mountaineers in the world. Why do they do it? How do they do it?

John Krakauer recounted the desperate tale of the ill-fated ’96 expedition in his book Into Thin Air: “There were many, many fine reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act—a triumph of desire over sensibility.” It is a feat begun in desire that can be accomplished only through desire. Krakauer explained how one of his climbing partners attained the summit: “Yasuko had been propelled up the mountain by the unwavering intensity of her desire.”

Desire—it’s the only way you will ever make it. Take marriage, for instance. Or singleness. Either makes for a far more difficult and arduous ascent than Everest, in large part because it does not seem so. The struggles are not heightened and focused into one month of do or die; rather, they stretch on across a lifetime. So it is with any act of faith or of hope—anything, in other words, that makes a life worth living. How can we possibly sustain such an intrinsically irrational act as love if we’ve killed our desire?

(Desire , 18–19)

This is the way I feel about getting through to bring Marina home. It is an unwavering intensity of desire to touch her with my hand to her little face, to bring her face a little smile, to seal her heart with the hope of Love, where she may know none. Caylyn is the one who delivered the message that love is alive and well in our home. It has been resuscitated and rescued from absolute death, a revival the likes that anyone who knew us would have to see to believe. Of course, the orchestration by the graceful sway of God's hand creating our beginner's song of life is the true songwriter of our ability to love. Trusting Him in his message is seen as daring in a society that demands perfection, that proverbial carrot we chase. His rules of creation though, include rules that we have been taught ought not to apply to us--we cannot embrace defective children, surely you don't ask that of us? I promise you His economics of design are not bound by what we think we can and cannot have, do or be subjected to. And yet can you imagine for a moment that I know many families who are jumping at the chance to bring home a child such as that society deems damaged. Why do you suppose that is? Could there be something to the giving rule of love? Love is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful or proud or rude....Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. If that is what Love can be here on earth, imagine this..."No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9) I admit I am a novice at Love but I do know that the more true love you give, the bigger it gets. Hitching our hearts to the creator of love seems like an insurmountable explosion of Great Love....perhaps that is the real Big Bang theory?! Like we would be so blown away by the reality of what God is creating for us on the plains of heaven! Makes me want to go see now, but I have committed to loving these children and bringing hope to their hearts first. I have prayed since Evan was a small baby that he would rise up to be a mighty warrior. My position as his teacher and mother to his life here on earth is not finished yet and I shudder to think of him unprepared because of anything I failed to help him with. Yes, our days are filled with busy and crazy, the two sidekicks that seek to make us insane, but under it all there is an order to this plan that boggles the mind heart and soul of mere man. That the spirit has the tenure to whisper it into our hearts nonstop is a comfort on its' own.

In the Message Psalms 51:17 reads "Heart shattered lives ready for love don't for a minute escape God's notice".