Yearning . . . a healthy Christian thing?

I was reading the Lady Julian this week, where she discusses prayer in Ch. 41-43, and she says,

Prayer is a right understanding of that fullness of joy that is to come, along with true yearning and certain trust. In prayer, the lacking of our bliss (that we are naturally appointed to) naturally makes us to yearn; true understanding and love (with sweet remembrance of our Savior) graciously make us trust.

And thus by nature do we yearn, and by grace do we trust. And in these two actions, our Lord watches us constantly, for it is our duty, and HIs good ness an assign no less to us.

Let me break that down for you. The "fullness of joy that is to come" is being enfolded into God's joy, "to be one-ed to and like our Lord in everything" (42). We had this joy in the very beginning when the first people walked and talked with God. That's what she means by "naturally appointed to." This is what we were created for, but we don't have it anymore. We are "lacking" something, and we want it back. We really want it back. That's what she means by yearning.

The definition of yearning, according to Bing, is to "have an intense feeling of longing for something, typically something that one has lost or been separated from." Yearning is a craving, an unfulfilled passion, a deep tingling desire that can actually take your breath away.

And I wondered, do I yearn for God? Do I ache to be one with him.

I know what yearning is. I feel that mildly every spring when I walk past the garden section of the home improvement stores because there are all kinds of plants that I would love to buy but that I'm not really prepared to grow.

But more seriously, as a Navy wife, I lived with yearning every time Seth went out to sea. At 4 pm, every day he was gone, I would start listening for an engine in the drive way, and I would jump if a neighbor closed a car door, even though I knew that Seth wasn't coming home that night. I would stay awake until 2 in the morning because our empty bed reminded me that he was gone. That's yearning.

Yearning is a physical feeling. It catches you in the chest and the throat, and, if you be married, in other parts of the body too. Yearning is anguish, like being stretched, like having the skin of your soul lifted off of your heart and pulled in the direction of the thing you long for. "Leaning and harkening" is the phrase that John Donne used in "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning." Yeah, lots of leaning and harkening and listening and hoping and waiting. Those are not fond memories. Poetic, perhaps, but not pleasant.

But do I yearn for God? Julian says it is natural to us to yearn to be closer to God. Moreover, she says it is our duty.

This is the God-shaped hole but on a higher level. This isn't just a hole in one's soul. Julian isn't describing a need to be filled but a need to be joined.

I like to think that I hunger and thirst for righteousness, but I don't often sit and yearn for God. At least, I don't pine for him the way I used to pine for my husband. When I'm trying to get sin out of my life, I'm not usually working with the thought that it separates me from God. More present in my mind is the idea that sin hurts me or hurts my neighbor (And, hey, whoever does not love human beings, whom we can see, can't say that he or she loves God, whom we cannot see.) and makes God unhappy.

We are accustomed to seeing God as a Father, as a King, as a Shepherd. How often do we think of Him as a Lover/Husband? We know that God is always with us. How often do we think about how much closer we will be? The psalmist longed to see God's face. I can tell you, there were days when I longed to see Seth's face.

 I think I need to indulge more in longing for my Heavenly Husband.