Miriam’s Desires = My Crazy Time



A while back my spiritual director, who is always encouraging me to explore my deepest desires, in fact, to explore and bring into the Light all my desires, told me about how he and his wife share their desires for the day with each other every morning. Then they ask each other, “What can I do to make those happen for you?” When I went back a month later to him, I mentioned how I discovered I was resistant to doing that with Miriam. I realized that if I were to make myself available to Miriam in that way, I would begin to lose control of my day.

Miriam grew up in a missionary family and as a little girl learned to not pay attention to her desires. When we got married I somehow, I want to say unconsciously, figured this out about Miriam and, sad to say, encouraged it. It worked to my benefit to have Miriam be more interested in and attentive to my desires than her own.

It was a humbling moment when my spiritual director asked me how long Miriam and I had been married and responded to my answer by say, “So you’ve had 30 years of training Miriam not to pay attention to her desires?” I think I can honestly say I experienced a wave of grief wash over me.

But now we’re on a different road. My wife, as am I, is filled with desires, many God-given desires. My sense is that as I encourage her to search for those desires and allow them to work their way to the surface of her thinking and feeling, I will begin to discover some amazing things about the person to whom I’m married.

But I’m also realizing that as I open myself to hearing Miriam’s desires and then ask the question, “What can I do today to make those happen for you?” I will be entering crazy time. I will begin to leave life as I know it and enter some painful and changing terrain.

My spiritual director is Catholic and sees his marriage as a sacrament. He believes that whenever people come into contact with him and his wife, they should be coming into contact with divine grace. He also sees his marriage as an indicator of his ability to hear and obey God. To the extent that he can know his wife’s desires and be able to say, “Whatever you want will determine the course of my day,” to that extent he figures he is following Jesus. Too often we can hear God telling us what we want to hear, so he uses the pursuit of fulfilling his wife’s desires as an indicator that he is also open to truly listening to and fulfilling the desires of God in his life.

That the course of my day would be determined by the desires of my wife would be a step for me into crazy time. To listen to the heart of Jesus and allow that to determine the course of my day? Crazy time. God in your grace, have mercy on me.