what do you want
“Mom Jones?” Riley’s voice stops me mid-confession.
Jones, what Riley calls “our funny last name,” is a silly joke from years ago that eventually became a sign of Riley’s affection.
I look at her, startled out of a full-on run to Jesus. In the space of the last hour, pride and comparison, mistaken identity and criticism, had wound about my ankles, slithering like snakes, tangling my thoughts like weeds. The details that tempted me onto such dangerous ground hardly matter, only that I had started to slip, had felt the dark emptiness of the pit hidden beneath as all the twining vines began to break beneath my step, and had swiftly turned away from a certain fall, calling the name that stands alone as a prayer for rescue.
“Yes?” I draw out the word just to make her smile.
“So, Josh Jones texted me, and what he said was, ‘What do you want for Valentine’s Day?’” She gushes, exhaling delighted laughter. She leans on the bar in the kitchen, twisting a hank of brassy hair around one finger while she gazes down at her phone. She is my daughter, and in this moment, also every friend I’ve ever had, sharing from that tender place where again she becomes a girl.
“And what did you say?”
Maybe because I had just been caught again by Christ’s strong hands, those fingers gently wrapping around my wrists to pull me safe, I think of the similarity between Josh’s question—“What do you want me to give you?”– and the one Jesus often asks in scripture of those who approach Him, “What do you want me to do for you?” It would seem to be the nature of Love to want to understand the wishes of His Beloved. This is an open, intimate invitation: Tell me what you want.
Faced with questions about the heart’s desire, I think about how those entrapping temptations of mine mis-assign value to worthless and insecure things. Spiritual warfare has gone on this way since time began, and only one human has held a perfect record against it. Sometimes I want for trinkets when I’ve been given the wealth of heaven. The foolishness of my own wayward heart, were it expressed aloud, would sound like Riley answering Josh’s wide-open question by saying, “I want a plastic ring from a gumball machine,” while she stands in front of me wearing his engagement ring on her finger.
I can, in fact, imagine a dozen different answers Riley might have given Josh in answer to his question, everything from a heart-shaped box of candy to a pink teddy bear, a picture of the two of them, a card that says I love you, or flowers (she loves when he gives her flowers). Over the years, Josh has given Riley all those things and more, sometimes just on ordinary days when there’s no official celebration. She knows she can ask him for just about anything, and that Josh, who loves to give her good gifts, will always do his best for her.
I can’t help but think now of my journal sitting on the edge of my desk, of the volumes like it where I’ve scrawled an infinite number of prayerful requests—the honest answers God invites–and also a lifetime of grateful lists of gifts I’ve received from Him, often repeatedly. Our love affair has gone on for quite a while.
“Well,” Riley says, scrolling down with her thumb, looking for the exact text she sent in response, even though I’m certain she remembers. When she finds it, she reads to me, tucking that hank of hair behind her ear. “I said, ‘What I want for Valentine’s Day, is to spend time with you.’” She looks up at me and grins, wide and reckless, because in her answer she has identified and asked for the truest desire of her heart. The prodigal wants her real inheritance.
It’s said that God promises to give us the desires of our hearts, but how could that be, since we don’t always get what we want?
How could David really say in his psalm that he wants for nothing—nothing?—at all?
We clip out, our fingers like knives, the part that seems hardest to grasp while we’re falling. “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart,” wrote the same David who did in fact claim, “The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing,” before going on to describe a life completely satisfied by the presence of the Lord himself. God always gives God.
I just want to spend time with you.
What an odd turn of phrase, since what it really means is that even time itself falls easily away from hands clinging only to the One they love.
