Bringing My Desires Before God

“O Lord, before Thee is all my desire, and my groaning is not hid from Thee”—Psalm 37:10

Recently, I’ve noticed a tendency in myself to look around at our community during church services and think about what others have that I wish I had. It’s usually the mothers with babies and little kids. I feel like they’re in this club that makes them mysteriously more full and interesting than I am. It’s as if I think people would see my life as more meaningful if they saw me with my own child. Like I would have graduated to the big leagues, or something.

This line of thought can easily steal my joy in the presence of the Lord. How silly it is to be singing about the Resurrection of Christ, foretelling our own triumph over death, and reflecting gloomily that I wish I had a child right now and who knows if I ever will. I can also feel in myself an underlying suspicion of the Lord’s goodness. He probably doesn’t want me to ask Him for a child, I tell myself. If He wanted to answer that prayer, wouldn’t He have answered it by now? Maybe I think my desire has passed its expiration date, so I should throw it out with the garbage instead of bringing it with me to the Lord’s table.

Yet we have been told to come boldly before the Lord, as His children.  Jesus, teaching us to persevere in prayer, asserted, “What man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?...[H]ow much more will your Father Who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:9, 11).

So, I think God wants me to bring my desire before Him. I think He wants me to turn to His icon when these thoughts come to me during church, and to say, “Lord, all my desire is before Thee. Please heal me spiritually and physically and bless me with a child.” I can keep bringing this prayer to Him, and here’s what I think is the important part: when I bring this unfulfilled desire before Him, I can maintain my joy, knowing that He will bless me with “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17). We ask in the Liturgy of St. Basil that He will “fulfill all our petitions which are unto salvation.” We don’t have to doubt that God wants to bless us, and that He wants to give us every good thing. So as I watch and wait, I can rejoice that He never stops blessing me, and He never wants me to stop asking Him for His healing and for the goodness that He never ceases to pour out on us, in ways both seen and unseen.