The beauty of longing

It’s super powerful to ache for things.

Ladies, today I am going to present you with a half-baked idea. (But hopefully on a pretty platter.)

Normally, my annoyance alarm goes off when someone says they have a half-baked idea. I think it’s because I often lead planning and brainstorming meetings at work in which I really want fully-baked-I-can-smell-it-from-here-and-it’s-wonderful ideas.

Half-baked thoughts don’t usually get us anywhere. An article proposal that someone has taken a few minutes to think through before pitching is nearly always much better. 

But the thing is, I’ve thought and thought and thought about this idea for months (maybe years!) and it still feels a little half-baked! The toothpick isn’t coming out clean. The middle still giggles.

So while I should maybe keep letting this one cook, I’ve decided it might just need a little time to set up outside the oven. So here we go. (And I promise to be pretty much done with the baking analogies).

My half-baked idea is about longing. Specifically, righteously longing for what you don’t have yet, but very well could have in the future. 

It’s that carrot dangling in front of your nose. A carrot you sometimes let yourself sit and daydream about and sometimes run quite hard for, but it remains out of reach. Something you long for.

For years, I resented the feeling of longing; in fact, I felt a little guilty about it. 

I thought it was a feeling I should be able to “pray away.” Surely, if I could just be grateful enough for my life as is, or be faithful enough that good is coming, or have a wide enough perspective, then this dull ache would just go away. I could fix this problem that is longing. 

An obvious example of this is with dating. You righteously long for love and marriage. You daydream about it and download the dating apps, show up to the activities, or do whatever else you can think of to find your person. But for years, nada! So whether alone or in a room packed with people, you long for your special person to finally come around.

And if you’re me, you feel a little bad about it—that is, you do until you realize longing is not something to be fixed.

Longing is not something to step back in fear of or shove under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist. 

Longing for something is part of how you reach what your heart wants. 

When you long for something, your heart and energies don’t easily forget. Like how the pains of hunger while fasting help you remember who or what you are fasting for. The intense emotions of longing motivates you to find a way to make it reality. Your everyday choices (whether you notice or not) are influenced by what you long for. 

President Dallin H. Oaks said, “Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions.” And Elder Neal A. Maxwell says, “What we insistently desire overtime … is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity.” 

What if we saw longing as a tender friend, not our leering enemy? What if we took it as a helpful signal of where our heart is? I love, love, love this quote by one of my favorite writers Mari Andrew:

“I get a lot of questions from folks asking how to stop missing someone, to stop longing for what they no longer have. But missing doesn’t point to a character flaw or an obstacle to overcome; it’s a lantern held up to what mattered to us. When we enfold the ache into our day-to-day range of feelings, it can give our present lives more meaning.”

I love how she says “enfold the ache”; not punish it or shove it away. Instead of beating yourself up over longing for something, let your emotions remind you of what you want and motivate you to be ready for the day it does come.

President Jeffrey R. Holland published a book about two years ago called Our Day Star Rising. The book is a compilation of insights he’s shared about the New Testament. But it is one little line on the book’s jacket that seemed to light up and jump off the page when I read it: 

“Some of you have had difficult nights or days—or both—that have gone on for more than one 24-hour period. Some of them go on for weeks and months. Some of them can go on for years—a difficult problem that does not get resolved, a heartache that continues unabated, a conflicted relationship that never seems to heal, the constant presence of poor health or poor finances or poor choices. The list goes on and on. But someday, somewhere, not only when He comes but in anticipation of His coming, we can rest assured that His light will guide us unfailingly through—a star by night and the blazing sun of glory in the day. If we wait for it and watch for it and want it badly enough, our Day Star will most certainly arise in our hearts.”

Did you catch that? President Holland adds wanting something badly enough into the equation of how we get there.

Knowing that may not make life any easier—but maybe it will. Let yourself feel. Let yourself want. It’s OK. In fact, those hard emotions might be necessary to push you toward what you don’t have yet. Kind of like how the Jaredites didn’t get a break from the relentless (and probably exhausting) wind driving them across the ocean to the promised land. Wind that “never did cease to blow.”

And what was the Jaredites method to endure?

“They did sing praises unto the Lord … all the day long; and when the night came, they did not cease to praise the Lord. 

“And thus they were driven forth; and no monster of the sea could break them, neither whale that could mar them; and they did have light continually, whether it was above the water or under the water.”

These emotions, this longing, isn’t going to break or mar you. Stay close to the Lord, study His life and love until you feel ready to sing praises! With Him, you’ll have the light you need to get by, whether you feel above or under the water.

Longing is part of our mortal experience. You are likely on the right path doing exactly what you should. 

The Savior is the one who will reach your reachings, fill your longings. Only He can offer you a little oasis where the longing lets up and you can refresh and renew to continue your journey.

Our queen Eliza R. Snow once wrote: 

“[The Holy Ghost] satisfies and fills up every longing of the human heart. … When I am filled with that Spirit my soul is satisfied, and I can say in good earnest, that the trifling things of the day do not seem to stand in my way at all. … Is it not our privilege to so live that we can have this constantly flowing into our souls?”

I am still working on the “constant” part, Eliza. But I believe what she says is true—it is possible to be so full of the Spirit of Christ that my longings melt away and I feel totally satisfied and at peace. I experienced this just yesterday at the temple. I felt such a deep, permeating peace that I want to go out and show everybody else how to feel it too. 

Ok, I have one more quote that has been circling in my head from our other queen, Sister Tamara W. Runia. If you haven’t devoured her talk from last conference yet (and I mean, like, licked up every last crumb) please go do so. You are really missing out on a cultural movement.

Sister Runia says, “I will admit there are times when earth, our temporal home, feels like an island of sorrow—moments when I have one eye of faith and the other eye is weeping. Do you know this feeling? …

“I had it Tuesday.

“Can we instead choose the faithful posture of our prophet when he promises miracles in our families? If we do, our joy will increase even if turbulence increases. …

“I bear my testimony that this—all of this—is going to turn out so much better than we could ever imagine! With an eye of faith on Jesus Christ, may we see that everything will be all right in the end and feel that it will be all right now.”

Love you!