The Pursuit of Passion

Before I had it, I longed for passion.
I’d see it, you know. I’d see it on movies and read it about it in book after book.
I wanted it. I wanted to be it. I wanted to feel it.

Before I was old enough to grasp it, back when I knew everything and before I still had worlds to learn, I went seeking passion.

I found a fleeting look-alike. The smell of it clung to my hair on hot summer nights.
It set my heart to racing and made my words sweet like sugar water.
But it was a childish thing. Found in all the wrong places while exploring with

All the wrong people. And like sugar water, it became cloying and rotting.

It was a hot pink passion. Like bubble gum, sticky but not holding, a mess when misplaced.
Like construction paper hearts on elementary Valentines days, embellished with lace and paper doilies and written with pretty sentiments that would surely fade when left in the

Back window on a sunny day.
It was an easily torn passion. Easily wilted. Tossed away and tried again.
It turned into marriage one day. And I thought surely I’d found it,
Of course it would hold that real-life romance where dancing happens in the kitchen and nights are spent under the stars.
And I was disappointed to find that real life doesn’t usually read like romance novels.

There was a time I thought I could find

All the passion I could want in my sons.
Them with their sweet, soft skin, and their insatiable need for me.
Them with their doe eyes and grasping hands that held my finger so perfectly.
But it quickly turned from a baby blue passion into a

Black one.
A sucking black thing that ate me up when I realized
I was not enough on my own.
And fear gobbled up my heart in the night.
And told me I was failing them.
Then the passion was disabled, it came rushing and pulsing then choked me because I could not protect them as much as I loved them.
It was a dark and scary passion. A desperate-not-to-fail passion.

So I ran, went looking for deep and rushing elsewhere.
I found myself searching marriage again, seeking to understand where passion fit in the

Thing I didn’t comprehend.
And I found that marriage passion is much less moonlight dances and down comforters and much more concrete.

I thought it a white passion. Lacking luster and tearing down trust.
Sometimes it was blinding and sometimes it was dull and

All the time I didn’t understand why.

Why would we be called to something so hard?

I got close once, picking through just going to church.
Like a game of Marco Polo, I was warm but not hot.
I felt a tickle of conviction in the knowledge. Felt a little

Stirring in the lack of understanding.
I didn't seek. I was lazy.
I felt a hunger on Sundays.  The way you feel when you need to eat fruit and water

But your drink soda instead. And the hunger goes away.
But not really.
It was quite a grey passion. A little blurred.
A little between the lines.

It was like a smudge of ashes, like smoke without fire.
A little bit of a mix between black and white.
It was a very small passion. Too small to carry me through

Big leaps.
Big hurts and big needs.

So I sought to fill the gaps it left in a lifestyle.
In warm eggs in a nestbox,

Homemade bread, clothes on a line,

Babies on the hip and a mason jar of sweet tea.
How romantic it would be to have a life to be passionate for.
It was, and it is.
However it’s a very green passion. Shifting with the seasons.

It is like grass, growing rampant when the water is plentiful but turning brown in drought.
It’s a passion that dies a little in the wintertime.

It strains a little when there is no time for showers alone.

When the kids get sick and when a goat gets sick, or when a

Mother rabbit decides not to care for her babies because it’s too hot,

And so they grow cold.

I see people looking. 

All sorts of people, surely we were made to be passionate. 

Surely, we were made in the image of an incredibly passionate God. 

And he would not leave us searching.

I found it unexpectedly. On a random Tuesday.

I found Him in a shopping center, on a cross, in the Book, in my dreams.
I found Him when He was chasing me. And I heard Him shouting,

“I AM PASSION! I AM PASSION! I AM PASSION!”

And I realized I had been running. Searching relentlessly, longing for the very thing

that was hot on my heels. Pursuing me uncompromisingly, longing to have me.
And one day, a random day, I simply turned direction.
And I ran towards Him.

I laid down my ideas of what passion looked like, of what knowledge looked like, of what romance and marriage and motherhood looked like.
And I ran.

And it hardly took long at all until I collided into the arms of

Passion.
I fell in love and caught on fire.

Passion changes things.
It puts fire-tinted glasses over searching eyes.
It reveals the hidden obvious.

It shows that marriage’s white passion holds every color of light.
That true love is both a downy place to land and a concrete place to  

Stand

Build

Grow.

True passion filled in the black hole of fear in motherhood.
It brought back the baby blue. Reminded me

When their chubby hands outgrow my finger,
I need only hand them over to Him.
It assured me that if I am enough or if I’m not,

It doesn’t matter because He always is.

He tore down my walls of knowledge. Erased the smudges of grey

And with red blood, made things

Black and white again.
And then my eyes were opened

And the Word was alive. It was speaking to me.
And I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t wanting.

I became a girl dancing on the feet of my Father.
With freedom to twirl, arms spread wide in
deep and solid abandon.

Passion made me grateful.
For all these things I have to be passionate for.
It has ignited all the dry places.
Healed all the scarred places.
Made light all the dark places.
It covered the lies with truth.
The fear with peace.

I became bold.
In this passion that is security that is mine, I am bold.
A roar or a whisper, whatever He calls for, I can be.
I am armed and not afraid.
This is a red passion, and a orange one, with flashes of blue and white and sometimes

There is lightning.

It is an unconceivable passion.
Such a beautiful passion. It is the

Loveliest of romances.
It is honey. Life-giving. Unable to spoil.

It’s yours too, this passion.
Whether you know it or not.
Whether you are running fiercely or sitting comfortably in warmth.

There’s a fire on your heals.
Do you want it?

Hear these honey words,

Feel them drip down into that longing, deep place of

Needing to burn.

I pray now that if you are reading this, 

You will catch fire. 

I pray that some place in you that longs for passion perks up, 

Maybe it's tired of searching. 

Maybe it's tired of running. 

Maybe it's just tired. 

Let this honey drip down and let the fear shut it's mouth and 

Hear me. 

Passion is hot on your heels. 

Fire is hot on your heels. 

Turn around and pursue the arms of Jesus. 

He is passion, and when you collide into Him, 

You will be passion, too.