#23 – Navigating the Nuances of Desire and Faith

Join us for a conversation exploring desires, particularly in the context of faith and personal growth. We share our own journeys of learning to understand the true nature of desire, the fears that often accompany it, and the importance of embracing desires as a roadmap to our Divine purpose. 

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Transcript

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Welcome to this week's episode. We are so happy to have you here. Dez and I are super excited to dive into today's topic because it's one that we touch on regularly, but we want to go into a little bit more of our own origin stories today. And the topic is learning to trust our desires and that little inward voice of guidance that for various reasons, many of us, especially women of faith, women who've grown up in religious environments, that voice of desire, which I often linked even to my own intuition, we've often learned to silence it for different reasons. And so we're gonna share a little bit of our own journey and the process that we've gone through and where we are today and how actually we now both view desire is... one of the key ways that God speaks to us. So without further ado, let's dive in. Dez, do you want to add anything before we kind of dive into the topic? We're wanting to hold a mirror up for other people to find themselves on their own journey of relating to desire, especially in a church background, if maybe listeners are really like, we don't understand what you're talking about and how desire could be called evil, but there's such a prevalent teaching that, the heart is very evil and there is a scripture that says that and there's a lot of nuance to that scripture and so much more of the Bible talking about desire and the heart being a really sacred, sacred place where God meets us. I think understanding the context of why we think this is such an important thing is that we've had so much to work through. We've had so many of these beliefs. What would you say are some of the foundational or pillar beliefs that you had before going on a road back journey? I don't know that I remember being directly told this, but I know as a young girl growing up in church, were things but I know as a young girl growing up in church, were things that I I subconsciously, if nothing else, picked up about desire that made me very, very scared to trust it, very scared to even really acknowledge desire. Desire was often portrayed in somewhat of a dangerous way of like, you can't same. trust desire. Desire was often linked to some sort of sensuality, maybe something sexual. It might be linked to lust or gluttony or greed or something that felt like, if you give it an inch, it'll take a mile. Like you've got to be very careful about desire because if you allow yourself to even want things, that's potentially gonna cause you to create an idol in your life. God said, don't have any other gods before me. So if you start to desire things, if you're not careful, it's gonna be very easy for them to get out of control. And you're gonna find yourself caught up in some sort of hedonistic, debaucherous lifestyle. So I learned from pretty early on to not give my desires much of a voice. What I noticed, is I inadvertently developed quite a strong fantasy life. I would have said of kind of dreaming about things I didn't allow myself to really own desire. So I would create these fantasy world ideas of like, oh, well this could happen and that could happen. Not that it was necessarily bad, but it kept me disconnected from what I truly wanted. I think when you don't feel permission to have something, you either learn to suppress it. So I did that a lot. Or finds other ways of expressing itself. I often would escape into something of how I wished things could be. um But it never occurred to me that I could be powerful and take action and move towards actually incorporating some of the things that I wanted because I didn't really feel like I had permission I felt quite fatalistic. Like if God wants me to have something, He'll make it happen. If I want too much, does that mean that I'm being covetous? Does it mean I'm somehow being greedy? Does it mean I am not being grateful for what I have? So there was lots of different narratives that played in my mind that caused me to undermine what I wanted and to feel scared to give it any sort of space – like I wasn't allowed to have this. And I couldn't trust it if I, if I did allow it. For one, it's so relatable. I could see myself in a lot of what you were sharing and have felt similarly it as black or white law, that all desire is evil. Then a natural outcome is what do you do a human desire? We're not talking about like, I wanna go across the street and then murder that person. We're not talking about those. We're just talking about natural desires of I want to own a house. I want to get a new car. I want to start dating. These are just natural life desires. Because you don't have the option or you're not allowed to dream, I would fantasize that that desire would be fulfilled in some way would God would intervene some random mail being sent from someone who didn't know me because the desire was there but I wasn't allowing it to have space. I often began to fantasize that those desires would be fulfilled in some fanatical, magical sort of way. Touches on some of the results of having quite a disempowered relationship with desire, because I was very powerless in the way I handled a lot of dreams. You could link desires and dreams. It was something where I felt if God wants it to happen, He'll just make it happen. And I can kind of sit here and wish and hope, but He's gonna do all the work because I don't feel permission to take any initiative because I can't even trust that what I'm hearing is true. So I need to rely on some sort of outside source or leader or circumstance to direct my steps because turning inward and leaning into the inner voice and guidance of my intuition or the wisdom that God had placed within me, that didn't feel like an option. So I was constantly hanging out for an external point of direction to tell me what I could or couldn't do. Yeah, very similarly. I do think this is a result of not letting desire be informational and be held with nuances. You tend then to wait for something or someone outside of you to prove to you that that's holy or right. I remember in a season of my life, I was homeschooling my kids, but I could tell that I wanted to stop. It was great. Like I loved homeschooling my kids. Don't get me wrong, but I could tell I was getting to the end of it. But in my system and the way I would handle that information, the way I did handle it is I began to pray that God would tell my husband and he would come and approach me and say, Dez, what are you thinking? Are you ready for a change? Like, honestly, that's what I thought. I sort of cringe think about how powerless I was to even articulate, feeling and noticing that I'm done with this. I'm ready for something else. I think this is important because we often outsource it to in my belief system. I was like, he's my husband. He'll know better. He'll be able to tell me if this is holy and good and right. And we outsource this. We outsource this pastors. We outsource this to friends. It's a vulnerable experience and relationship to be in if I can't have a sense of me knowing what I need and what I want for my life, but I'm only looking to another, it sets people up to be in a more abusive situations. Yes. That's why this is so important to us. It's a very dangerous position. If you are not allowed to have a voice if you are not allowed to have your own opinion or your own autonomy in any sort of relationship including a relationship with God, then I can say from firsthand experience, I found myself in some very unhealthy church cultures leadership cultures because I had outsourced my ability to make decisions to those around me in the name of what I thought was being obedient to God. I had not felt permission to connect to what I wanted to do. And on those occasions where I did connect to what I wanted to do, I needed lots of external validation before I felt like I was allowed to act. That is one of the things that I feel a lot of sadness when I see really good people stuck in patterns of indecision and double-mindedness, not being able to make meaningful progress on things that are important to them. And so often these are just beautiful people who haven't felt any permission or haven't been told that you can tune in and that the desires that are within you have been placed there for a reason. We can all think of instances where we can go, well, but that person took their desire too far or I let my desire turn into impulsiveness at some point and I made a bad decision or I made a series of bad decisions. So that has then reinforced my own internal dialogue that says, well, I can't trust this because look at this instance. Or my parents blew up their marriage or this thing financially went wrong. I think we all have moments of pain that have touched our lives that can sometimes reinforce the story we're telling ourselves that go, I did this or I stepped out and it didn't work out, it blew up. That just proves that I can't trust it. And that's definitely been something that I've had to choose to unpack and we used be scared of desire. And actually for me, tended to put all desire is bad. I can't trust it. It's gonna lead me into sin or lust or something evil. But then equally, I also can't go 100 % well, then every single desire that ever crops up is good. And so I have to follow it 100%. Desire is nuanced. Yes. we have a podcast called the road back podcast and a huge part of our journey was learning to reconnect to our inner world, reconnect to the voice of our heart, reconnect to the voice of God in our heart even. Whereas we used to live so much of our lives outsourcing every decision. Coming to a point where it's like, now we have a much more balanced perspective of the majority of my decisions, I am looking inward first and I pull on outside counsel to help me make decisions. But it's no longer 99 % outside counsel, 1 % me. And that isn't an overnight process. That is a journey. Yeah. love that. Oftentimes it's one or the other extremes. It's like desire is all evil or desire is always good. So I wanted that thousand dollar Gucci, blah, blah, blah. So I just went and bought it even though I don't have that. Often people are trying to create total rules for their life around extremes. Like you're saying, we see one person derailed and we're like, that's it. I'll never trust desire or the opposite is true. We're really wanting to feel into this nuanced place is that the truth is sometimes I have more than one desire at once and those desires can be at odds with each other. I want to go out and have fun and I want to stay at home and rest. I'm bringing down the stakes. But like if you just talk about it, the truth is, is a more holistic journey is more nuanced where you're noticing that there's probably lots of different things at play, but you're not throwing them out. Desire is not something you just automatically throw out anymore, where you're like, I can't trust myself. Who knows? I might end up, I started my own business. Yes. Yes. Yeah. because like we said at beginning, you gave it an inch, it blew out of control, yeah. Actually, contrastingly, I see most clients of mine, they don't even know what they want. Like, do you want that job or not? They have outsourced every sense of themself because that's helpful. The pastor needs this help. So that must mean God is telling me that I should go work in the nursery. I find that most people, they're in such a tumultuous emotional experience because they feel like they have to. They feel like because they were invited to do this thing that like God's will is on the outside of them. And that they can't even trust do I even want to do that thing? And this is what I'm hoping to show nuance is you're allowed to consider your desire as a part of this equation, a very part of your life's decision making. I remember some key seasons in my life where I was so used to praying for direction, asking for direction, which I actually am very pro. I am very pro, acknowledge God in all your ways so he can direct your paths. And that's what we're talking about, the nuance of this. We're not preaching one side of the coin and ignoring the other. I very much have a high value for acknowledging God and for asking for direction. But I remember a really specific season of my life where I was asking for direction and I wasn't hearing anything. And when I would hear something, I'd hear something like, Melissa, you choose, I trust you. And that was very scary for me because I was so used to relying on that external confirmation that I was on the right track. And that whole season that I was in began inviting me into a process that I'm still onto until this day, but it started teaching me to trust the internal guidance. And that can feel very scary for people if they've never been on it before. It was scary for me. I remember there were a couple of times I had some decisions to make and every time I would pray, Jesus would just say, you choose, I'll bless it. That didn't feel safe for me because I was like, no, no, you tell me what to do. And he's like, no, you, I trust you. You can choose this decision. Looking back, I think for me it was maturing process because we don't want our 17, 18, 20 year old kids coming and asking us what they should do about very, very basic decisions. We as parents, we're raising them to be able to be autonomous, healthy individuals who know how to make good decisions and feel confident even if they make a decision and later on regret it, that they have the skills and the tools to be able to correct where there has been maybe a mistake or decision. And if you don't believe that you can make a good decision, you're going to have a really hard time, I think, with control, because you're going to have a really hard time trusting your kids can make good decisions. You're potentially gonna wanna micromanage things if we think God is spending his life micromanaging us, we then tend to try to micromanage everything else. And that takes a lot of our own mental and emotional bandwidth to try to control everything around us because we're thinking, well, God's out to control me. So I have to control things around me. And we do it in the name of, being good Christians. I think you have thoughts about that too, Dez. That was a little bit of a rant. I love what you said, Mel, because, you know, control is the opposite of love in my perception, energetically. If I went to control you, that does not transmit to me, Dez, you're so loved. I love how you are. You're safe to be you. And so I think this is helpful because if create such rigid rules around desire, we end up overcompensating in other ways, like I'm raging control because that's the only way that I can feel like I have sense of power in my life. Mmm. Ooh, yeah, that's good, that's... sense of power, whereas in autonomy, this is a fundamental, theological belief, because it's, to me, this is at the very core of who I believe God is, or how I think he is with me. If I believe that God is safe to let me have a sense of autonomy, because he's completely autonomous in himself, and I'm safe to have that autonomy to grow and to learn and to practice these things, just we want our children to, then we are less rigid in our own systems with our own lives. And we give autonomy towards people and their own decisions and the things that work for them. Man, I mean, so much of my church life was I have to be in the nursery because I was asked to be in the nursery. There's a need to be in the nursery. And I remember people just being so overburdened with the needs of others. There was no sense of what's happening for me. What do I need? We often think one trumps the other, the needs of others trump my needs or the desires of others will trump my desire. There's not enough room in this economy where more than one person can have a desire at the same time. I see a lot of people in Christian circles orbiting around this, I have to give up sacrificially to honor God. And then if that's the only way to honor God, then you get stuck, people get stuck. And it's like, why am I not important to God? This is such a felt feeling that is very relatable, I think, to a lot of us then you come away with a sense of you're not valued and important because you can't honor your own autonomy. This is obviously a topic that we're both quite passionate about another reason I didn't own desire is I was afraid that if I let God know what my desires were, that he would make me give it up to prove that I was devoted to him. Mel, I'm so glad you said that, because I think this is so relatable. Yeah. I was very scared to own my desires because I was so afraid that it would become an idol that I wouldn't really allow myself to admit that I wanted something because I thought if I even tell myself or tell the truth about what I want... It was a deep fear of I will have to prove to him that he is more important to me by offering this up on the altar of sacrifice. So if I have any desire, I cannot get very attached to it. So I would, I would purposely either suppress it or keep it at arm's length. I was like, if I want this too much, Jesus is going to be like, okay, hand it over. I'm going to take it away from you now because you can't be trusted with this. I had an incredible amount of fear. Coming to grips with desire has been a very vulnerable journey. I think it is vulnerable in general because it touches into our authenticity. It touches into our gifts. Personally, I think desire points us often to our destiny or the paths that we are meant to take. I see many, many Christians tormented over, and I don't mean like tormented necessarily externally, but in their own minds, going around circles again and again and again, why am I here? What is my purpose? What is my destiny? But then if you ask them what they want, like you said, they can't tell you, and this isn't just a Christian affliction, suppressing desire doesn't make us more holy. It just makes us more disconnected from ourselves. That's a mic drop. There's a lot of fear wrapped around it. I feel angry and sad about it because one of the biggest reasons that I even wanted to do the podcast or the reasons I do the things that I do, my purpose is to help people unlock the things that are in their heart to do. The reason we love talking about this topic is because our whole heart is to help people reconnect to what is going on internally, because it is very hard – even if I was the most discerning, prophetic, visionary person out there and I could be like, okay, Dez, this is exactly what you need to do. You could light up and feel inspired by that and maybe I would be accurate. But it's another thing when you wake up to the desire in your own heart and you start letting that be the thing that fuels your decisions and you begin to co-create your life with God. That is an entirely different operating system, which I wouldn't trade for anything now. I don't ever want to go back to outsourcing everything the way I used to and living so powerlessly and hitting the verge of burnout and not feeling like I could do anything about it because everything was run according to the wishes and the whims of other people. Oh my goodness, as you're sharing this, I'm noticing that there is often a very high stakes sense of me discovering my purpose in life. That was perfectly acceptable in Christian circles, which I thought was so interesting. concept. Yeah, I used to preach sermons on this. Like I have literally done woman's retreat about, like I- as a main speaker about your purpose. So this is what I find so interesting. At that time, I'm just totally telling myself, I knew that identity was a huge part of purpose, I had not yet discovered how desire was a part purpose. But I think oftentimes there's a lot of shame. What is my life's purpose? I think because it's such a vulnerable thing, shame shows up because we haven't honored desire first. Honestly, your purpose is inside of you. It's through the forms of your desire, through the things that you naturally are inclined to do. I feel like there are so many more stories. I remember sitting across from women crying because they wanted to adopt, but they thought that was selfish; because there was information being told to them on the outside that you need to be grateful for what you have. And I thought to myself, yes, be grateful for what you have, but also not everyone wants this. This is clearly for you. This is something very sacred that's for you that holds what we are calling purpose. That language is fine, but desire has often been bad. Even in my former versions of myself, I wanted people to fulfill what they should be doing. And I would often talk about it as purpose, but I love this because this feels practical. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Notice it. Let it be information. Let it inform you of things inside of you that are asking to be looked at with nuance. Mm hmm. But tell us, is there any story for you that helped you really solidify how you follow desire and what it taught you along the way? One significant story, and this is about 15 years ago now, when my family and I moved from New Zealand back to the United States. My husband's from New Zealand. We had been living there for a few years. Our oldest two kids were born there. What had happened is my... sister was involved in a church there and in some ministry opportunities. And I had gone to visit her and I remember within a matter of weeks after I got back, I remember exactly where I was. was sitting on my bed one day and this desire bubbled up in my heart. That's the only way I know how to describe it. I just remember having this thought come to me and I was like, I would really like to go back to America. I actually like to move back. It had been years since I'd lived back in the States. I just remember it coming up, like, this is what I want. I want to go back. I'd like to get involved in this church. I feel like the culture and everything that it stood for was something that was really resonating with what God was doing in my life at the time. And I had no natural means of getting back there because we had just walked through an incredibly difficult financial season. Yeah. not have the money in the bank to pick up and move a family of four back to America. We had other commitments in New Zealand at the time. And it was one of those things that I felt the desire bubble up and then I released it. I didn't throw it away, but I was like, wow, that is a desire. And I have no idea how that could happen. There's no way. And I kind of half floated the idea by my husband and he, was not interested. He was like, I'm happy where I am. I have no desire to move to America. He'd never lived in another country before. One of the things I love about desires that feel really big and a little bit out there is there are certain things that you know, that it can't happen kind of barring a miracle or God working on your behalf. Cause you're thinking I can't save up the money right now. It would take me a long time. I don't have the means to get there. My husband's not on board. The odds were stacked against me, but it was significant enough that I was just like, okay, well, let's just see what happens. So through a series of really wild events, I'll tell you how my husband ended up changing his mind. We lived in Christchurch at the time, Christchurch had a major earthquake. This is funny. They'd had a huge earthquake. was like a seven point something on the Richter scale. And if you've ever been in a place where there's been earthquakes, there are lots of aftershocks that will continue for months after the fact. So it is wild. And so we would have regular aftershocks and even more earthquakes. So what happened is one night at about three o'clock in the morning, we had an earthquake we woke up in the middle of the night and my husband was like, you know what, I think I do want to move to America. It was like a crazy, weird middle of the night thing. And he'll tell you the earth shook and is like, it shook the cobwebs out of his brain or something. And he's like, you know, I actually do think I want to go to America. And I was like, okay, I don't know how that happened because it must've been like Jesus shaking the foundations or something. I don't know what was happening. But in that conversation in the middle of the night, it was like a light bulb flicked on and he was like, okay, yeah, actually I wouldn't mind going. I'm telling you, we got his green card processed in a matter of weeks and it should have taken months. We had money start showing up. My dad ended up selling a piece of property and was like, Hey, I want to give you guys the proceeds of this and it's going to pay for all your plane tickets. I am telling you like one thing after another just fell into place, fell into place, fell into place, fell into place. It was one miracle after another realistically, because we didn't have the means of getting there. From the time that I said I wanted to go was April to the time we actually landed back in the United States was September. So five months. Wow, that's incredible. And we just went on this crazy wild adventure. It started because I acknowledged a desire that was in my heart. And I didn't shut it down when it seemed impossible. I gave it room to breathe and I gave it room to have a voice. And then I just kept taking the next step that was in front of me. That to me was a turning point in my life. I felt like I was learning like a playbook, then when I noticed a similar desire stir in my heart, I was like, oh, this feels like that same feeling it did when I was wanting to move back to America. Huh, this feels different than say an impulse buy where I go, I want that new outfit. That felt different to me than this specific desire, which felt like it was bubbling up from a much deeper place inside. So when I talk about having to learn your own language, if you've gone like, it's all bad, learning how to embrace the nuance and go, what does desire look like for me versus, you know, we can be driven by FOMO, we can be driven by competition with other people wanting to keep up. Those can be quote, quote, desires as well, but they're not necessarily coming from this authentic place within us. I've learned that different desires come from different places within. I love that. I even like how you're talking about there's a language that you have to sort of learn to translate. You have to learn. Oh, desires there. Let me translate it like let's look at and hold some nuance around. Yes, what's driving these things. I love that to me that makes a lot of sense for my brain. Most recent story that I would like to share my relationship with desire discovering it and nurturing it and holding it as information is that I felt a desire to start a mentorship in 2026. And I noticed I wanted to do several different things. There was like a lot of desire, this is, pretty vulnerable for me to share, but because this is a newer part of my life and I hold this as such an important thing, my heart's desire matters. This has given me so much life that I was like, ooh, I wanna do it all. Let's do it all at once. I mean, I worked and I worked and I read books and I created syllabus and I paid people. I paid lots of money so people could create websites and formats and designs. And I was like, I'm just gonna launch it. I'm gonna launch all my desire into the world. And what I noticed is that that was a lot for my system. And so I'm learning to go in step with my body and my desire and learning the right flow and pivots at times. I noticed I wanted to push my desire. I felt like we talked about that controlling thing. It was like, I really wanted my desire to happen. And I think this is an important part. I could feel that it didn't want to be pushed. I don't know how else to tell you, but that's how I would describe it. I was like, come on, baby. It's desire. It's in your heart. You got this. And it was like, uh-uh, we do not want to be pushed right now. And I had to learn to pay attention. I had to learn to honor that. It didn't disqualify that I had the desire in the first place. I didn't turn on myself, be like, you're such an idiot. You wasted money. You can't trust yourself anymore, Dez. I just was like, huh, this is information for me too. And I made a huge pivot in my mentorship program. I even gave myself weeks off to making the decision. So that's how much growth I've had. like, it's okay for me to even take time. Long story short, I ended up pivoting to another thing, because I told you, I wanted a lot of things. And I was like, maybe it's more this thing. it felt like it moved differently. It wasn't me just going, you have to go and fulfill desire. my whole force. Wasn't forced. I think that's where I'm learning. I'm learning that flow and feeling inside of desire and how to honor that. And my gosh, I'm seeing it now everywhere. I'm seeing now with family vacations. I'm like, I'm forcing that. I want it, which is beautiful that I've named it, but how do I do that if it's not asking to be pushed? There's a timing to things too. Even this podcast, we both wanted to do podcasts, years ahead of starting it, there's sometimes desires fulfilled in their own due time. In this pivot, it feels completely different in my system. It feels like everything started to move with it. People started to come in, telling me, oh yeah, this is exactly what I hoping you would do. And I'm like, oh wow, I had no idea. And I've gotten feedback from people who saw me launch my website the first time under completely different contexts. And they're like, oh, you're allowed to change your mind. I'm like, We are allowed to change our mind. We are allowed to go with ourselves through navigating desire and there's space and permission and time and you don't have to know everything before you start it. You don't have to know all the answers to make it worthwhile. That's so powerful because that is something that I see trip up a lot of people and it's tripped me up too, is needing to know the how, all the steps. If I can't see how I'm going to afford it, I can't even take that first step. If I can't see where Mr. Perfect is coming from, is there even any point in me getting on the dating app? I think logic is beautiful. I'm just saying that as an aside. I'm not throwing any shade on logic here, but desire will defy logic at times because I find that desire personally is often linked to faith. And it is this tangible, but often invisible substance by which we come most alive. And faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So there's a substance to it. Faith feels like something. And desire often will show up before our logic does, or sometimes in spite of our logic. And if we're not careful, we can use logic to talk ourselves out of something and shut it down rather than recognizing that logic is there to help, but I don't want that to be the only place that I make decisions from. When it comes to matters of the heart, I don't always want logic to make my decisions in those places because I have allowed it to shut me down. And then I've had to live with the regret later on of not following those nudges of desire in my heart. That's probably a mountain I'll die on.

You're gonna hear me talk about Proverbs 13: 32:01

12, it says desire fulfilled is a tree of life. So desire doesn't start as a tree producing fruit, desire starts as a seed of some sort. And so it's there. It's just not necessarily producing fruit until it goes through the process. You think of an apple tree that's been planted in an orchard for 15 years. If it's healthy, it's going to be producing a lot of fruit. But if it's only a little sapling, it's a different stage of the desire. The desire can go through phases and stages. I love the fact that you even just talking about the pivoting. I think your desire was there the whole time. The refining was part of the process. Yes. I like sharing about the pivot in my own journey because it expands what it's like to nurture desire. There's a lot to it. Nurture being the key word. Yeah. There's actually a lot to it. There's a lot of trust and faith involved. There's a lot of surrender but there's a lot of me doing stuff. There's a lot of action. It's just allowed to take time. That's what I love about the tree analogy. And it's such a good metaphor for us. I think Going back to some of the things we talked about at the very beginning, if we have a really powerless lens through which we view the world, we can sit back and go, well, I don't have to do anything. Cause if it's God's will, it's just going to happen. He's just going to bring my husband to me. I don't even need to leave my house. He's just going to show up miraculously on my doorstep. There's nothing I need to do because I don't want to get in God's way and do God's job for him. And I found that as I've gone on learning how to, I would even say steward desire, I think there's a relevance to stewarding desire, just like you could steward money or steward your gifts or steward your relationships. If desires are pictured as seeds, then how do I nourish the soil of my heart so that they can begin to grow? And part of that is the taking action part, taking the next right step. Because some desires aren't overnight. Some of them are going to take years to cultivate and to bear fruit. But I don't need to worry about next year's harvest if right now I'm just meant to be making sure I'm watering the seed that is in my heart. A seed will naturally spring up on its own if it is placed in the right conditions. And that's what I loved what you were talking about. Once you really nourish that seed and you were able to clear away maybe some of the extra, it flowed. It just, became easy. Things just clicked into place and people started showing up and it was like, almost like taking the handbrake off and letting the car begin to just coast. It's gonna pick up its own momentum because the right things are in place that are gonna feed and fuel this desire that was in your heart. Does that feel accurate the way I'm wording it? Yeah, so good. Before we land this session, is there anything that you really want the listener to notice or just remember from all of our sharing? I think reiterating that desire is not bad, holding the paradox of all of us have seen desire misused, but that doesn't necessitate throwing it all out. You could also use desire as a very important blueprint or roadmap for knowing what's next in your life. I so deeply want to see people learn how to connect to that inner voice in their heart and reconnect to those desires within because I think when they do that, a lot of the questions surrounding their purpose, their reason for being here begin to be answered. Learning to tune into that inner guidance system that every single one of us have been given is I think one of the greatest journeys you can go on. It really encapsulates the road back to yourself. If we can shake off some of that, like I have to get it right the first time, I'm not allowed to make mistakes. It's not about a destination right now. It's not like you're gonna suddenly be able to 100 identify this is the good one. And I need to throw that one out. No, it's the nuance and the dance of humanity. And for me, it's a lot of the way that I relate to Jesus is through the language of the heart, and then stepping out and trusting that what is coming up in my heart is good and it's been placed there by God. And if there's anything that's not good in there, like the parable of the wheat and the tares, I can let things grow and then trust at the right time, it'll be harvested, what needs to be taken away can be taken away, but I don't have to live in fear. I'd rather live from a position of openness and see what kind of life we can create when we really start giving those things that are within a voice. do you want to add to that, Dez? If we could have the perspective that desire is not really about the thing that desire is telling you, for instance, in your New Zealand, California story, you're not even in California anymore. It's not really about the end destination. Desire is about getting your journey with yourself, your road back journey, your road with Papa God, engaging with your life connected to your desires is one of the road back paths. What's your next step? Oh, it's within you can find it and you can know it in desire. So I loved this topic. And I would just encourage the listener, to ask yourselves, where do you find yourself in your relationship with desire? Maybe you can see yourself in those stories that we talked about, or maybe you're learning to name a desire or connect to it safely the first time and not outsource it. How could you begin to notice? How can we all just begin to notice what type of relationship dynamic are we having with desire? Anything else that you would want to add, Mel? If this feels challenging in any way, maybe you're still at that part where it feels scary, I would just invite you to consider that perhaps desire is a way that God wants to walk with you through your life. Perhaps He's the one who's placed those things in your heart to begin with. What would it feel like just to give yourself that little bit of space around what if this wasn't bad? What if this was actually pointing me to something good? What if some of those questions I've had about why I'm on earth could be answered by asking myself, what do I want? Yeah. We're here for you guys. We're with you. We're cheering you on as always. Yes. We'll see you next week. Bye.