Treasure Your Longings
A roundup of fun updates, plus a reflection on how the things that comforted me in my loneliness before getting married are the same things comforting me now.
Welcome!
If you’re new here, here’s how I engage with Substack: every Friday afternoon, I share a new essay or update that highlights notable pieces or podcast nuggets from the week and a place where I’m finding beauty, wonder, or delight.
Hello, friends!
I hope you had a chance to listen to this week’s podcast episode with Sarah Clarkson, an author and (still!) starry-eyed resident of Oxford, England. I was pleased to see this episode now has 3x more downloads than any other episode so far! Sarah has a loyal following of readers, and I’m grateful for any of you who found your way over here to Listen to Your Life from that community.
“I think we’re called to treasure our longings,” says Sarah. “To cherish them and to sit in their presence and allow them to teach us about who we were made to be.”
She shares a tender story about how she prayed for wisdom to reveal her lifelong struggle with mental illness to her now-husband, an Anglican priest. And God was faithful to meet her there in her vulnerability. In the episode, Sarah goes on to describe how human longing and hope should always be entwined in the same conversation:
If hope is not the end of longing, then there’s a real sense in which it can begin to eat us alive, this desire that has no capacity or possibility of being fulfilled. But hope leads us forward. Don’t diminish the possibility of love. Love is a force of such creative and redemptive power. And God is at work to create and kindle and continue that kind of love in the world.
Now for some more fun news!
On Sunday, my essay The Millennial Dream Dash was published by Ekstasis Magazine and featured in their Substack, Ecstatic. This may be why some of you are here today. Publishing this essay happened the same week I sat down to revise my literary nonfiction book proposal, and the feedback from readers filled my heart with joy and excitement for many more conversations to come, Lord willing. I’ve also unexpectedly connected with a couple industry professionals about the next steps professionally. Eeek! I can’t wait to see what comes from walking through these doors.
In January, I was also a guest on a new friend’s bookish podcast, Meg’s Reading Room. The episode is called How to Listen to Your Life, and we had so much fun talking about books, faith, and wellness. She also asks a question I’ve never been asked before: “How does your health impact your reading life?” Be sure to listen to the episode and give Meg a follow!
Words on love and loneliness from a late-bloomer to romance
I’m sitting at a bookstore cafe with a fellow writer friend on a rainy afternoon. It’s cold, but sunlight pours through the windows. In the pastry display case, pink cake pops stand tall and cheerful, and columns of Valentine’s Day-themed staff picks advertise YA novels about love, romance, and undoubtedly sex.
Some days, I forget I’m no longer single. Not really, truly—but I still identify with what it feels like to be a single woman in my 30s with a deep longing for companionship.
If you don’t know my story, I was single until I was 35 (except for a fling with an old college friend and many one-off dates). Last spring, my husband Noah and I were married after two very challenging years navigating not only our own lives but our shared relationship. Here’s what we know so far: we love each other deeply. Yet even being newly married, we still experience loneliness. I still wrestle with pain and mental illness that makes me drive off into the night.
Our longings will always follow us to the other side of our dreams. Whether this is a longing for love, healing, a close-knit community, forgiveness, etc., we live in a world divorced from God in many ways. We may find an increased sense of wholeness and well-being in many areas. But until we are reunited with Christ in the renewed heavens and earth where every pain is restored, these longings will remain. As I wrote this week in my Ekstasis essay, “Instead, as pain points have become constellations illuminated against the night sky, I’ve learned to trace God’s faithful presence in the midst of my suffering from point to point, illuminating the cosmos of care that we live in...”
Maybe this is surprising: What comforted me in my loneliness as a single, 35-year-old woman longing for companionship are the same things that comfort me now. I need long walks and nightly swims to ease my back pain. I need meaningful connections throughout the week with friends and family (near and long-distance). I need to stay committed to a healthy, low-inflammation diet to regulate my thyroid hormones and autoimmune disease. I need moments of solitude to rest my nervous system and connect with God. I need spiritual direction and prayer from those older than me. I need my church community. Conversely, Noah needs many of the same and also different things.
Because very little in our circumstances changed with marriage. My husband is still in school, finishing his ministry degree. I still have symptoms many days of the month. We are both seeking full-time work and financial stability. There are dark days when despair and loneliness come to ravish us both. But we do have each other. And this is the point of marriage/friendships/family as I’ve come to believe as a Christian. This others-focused love—originating in God—has many forms and expressions, and it’s meant to endure, sustain us on the hard days, and reflect Christ’s hesed (faithful, covenant) love for us.
If you carry unmet longings, let this be your encouragement today:
The other side of a dream come true will look a whole lot like the life you have right now: except each day, each hour, is a threshold into deeper, richer, and more beautiful expressions and understandings of our life with God and each other. So keep walking. Keep loving. Keep hoping. Because this is what we’ll continue doing no matter the context.
Where I’m finding beauty, wonder, or delight this week:
I loved this song by Skye Peterson on everything we just talked about above—maybe you will, too.
Have a beautiful weekend, friends. Please reach out if you like! I always love hearing from you.
With you,
Bailey
Listen to Your Life is a weekly newsletter featuring essays on faith, culture, grief, and the beauty of life with God. Here, we seek to live well in the face of our deepest longings. Subscribe for free to access select essays, or become a paid subscriber for $5/month and receive the full post archive + special content (videos, healthy recipes, mini-retreats, and more!).
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You can also listen to my recent guest interview (“How to Listen to Your Life with Bailey Gillespie”) with Meg’s Reading Room on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
"The other side of a dream come true will look a whole lot like the life you have right now: except each day, each hour, is a threshold into deeper, richer, and more beautiful expressions and understandings of our life with God and each other."
That was really good Bailey. I have some free time right now, so I'm just reading a bunch of your posts.
I like what you said...even when our dreams and longings are met, life will still look the same. we will still need our quiet times. our friends. our work. our church community. quiet times with God.