From Recover: Through the heat of the sun, we push through. But storms can come in and wash away all our progress. And so what happens then?

“Let go.”

I used to think that when God asks you to let go, it is only in the literal sense. However, through the course of many, many events that I would not want you to go through, I have found out that almost always the way God wants us to let go is by releasing our sticky fingers and by simply (though not easily) walking in faith.

First I tell you to acknowledge and claim the desires that have been stolen from you, and now I tell you to let them go. I may sound contradictory here, but don’t misunderstand. I’m not telling you to forget about your desires, to “set them free.” I’m telling you to stop making things happen on your own and to just trust God. Fact is, we get tired and frustrated because we haven’t given God the ropes, because we haven’t embraced the mystery and trusted in His supernatural timeline.

“When we don’t look for God as our true life, our desire for Him spills over into our other desires, giving them an ultimate and urgency they were never intended to bear.”

The way to preserving our desires is to uncover the desire beneath the desire, and by holding on to that deepest of deepest desires.

I don’t want us to journey into this without fully grasping that our desire for God is the source of all other wishes. We are able to want other things because we have understood that He is our primary desire. And when we get this, we will find that we finally have freedom of desire (not freedom from desire). Freedom of desire in a sense that we are no longer ruled by our desires, and thus we are free to continually desire. We allow ourselves to continually desire, because we know that we have the One we utmost, truly desire. (I dearly hope I didn’t lose you guys on that paragraph). 😁🙈

However, waiting is still painful, and it’s part of the process. It’s something I had to learn. I got inspired to write this series yesterday as I was crying out to God since I was honestly torn up. By this time I am already four months in on walking the path of desire and faith. I was fixing my eyes on Him, I gave it up to Him, so why does it still hurt so much? Then in a whisper, He came and said “it is because you desire me that I allow you to desire, and this experience is what true desire is. True desire continues to hope, continues to long, continues to hurt, continues to love – in spite of everything.”

I went to the hospital this morning to get stitched up. Why, you may ask. There’s this one room in one of our commercial areas I like to stay in because it’s so quiet. They’re currently doing construction there, so the other day I went after they were done. Upon arrival, I just walked around in the usual Jade way (you know, with a lot of bouncing and twirling 🙈) and to my surprise a few seconds later, there were big drops of blood falling on the floor in maddeningly fast pace. Seems like my foot got cut (deeply and widely, might I add) through one of the edges of the broken tiles placed up in piles. Believing for miraculous healing, I started praying when God told me to pour alcohol over it, like really pour it all over the gash. So I did, and man did it hurt. Then God spoke to me, “you have to go through the pain.”

I was still believing for healing afterwards. I’ll spare you the graphics, but what I did was I convinced my mom to tape the ends of the gash together so that the skin would meet and the wound would close. We agreed that if it didn’t work, I’m going to get it stitched up because the entire layer of skin came off. I was telling God, “please heal me so I won’t get hurt more.” But I really felt God telling in my heart, “nope, you have to go through the pain.” I didn’t want to hear it. And so I tried convincing my mom to knock me out with meds before I would get it stitched up, to which she and the rest of family laughed off as ridiculous. Obviously, I lost the match. Truth is, it wasn’t that bad – the stitching. After the anaesthesia took effect, everything was pretty mild. However, during the middle of the session, a painful wave of dysmenorrhea (male translation: tummy ache) hit me that I ended up writhing on the operating table and I was grasping the life out of the sheets trying to pull myself together. I usually couldn’t get out of bed whenever these pain attacks come around. So much for “it’s not that painful pala.” When God wants to drive a point, He really makes it hit home:

The only way through is through the pain.

“Spiritual surrender is not resignation. It is not choosing to care no longer. It is surrender with desire, or in desire. Desire is still present, felt, welcomed even. But the will to secure is made subject to the divine will in an act of abandoned trust.”

This kind of surrender is the most painful kind. After wrestling with our demons and coming out triumphant with the treasures buried in our hearts, after opening up once again to love deeply, we choose to lay it down and give it all before the Lord. This kind of freedom is the most beautiful kind.

And so we push on through, trusting that history is His story to which we all have beautiful, captivating, unique roles to play.

“Life is a journey of the heart that requires the mind, not the other way around.”