Wild Hearts

So I definitely spent way too much money on books today. On the one hand, they were all spiritual reading books. Of course, on the other hand, I already own many more spiritual reading books than I could finish in a year.

Anyway, one of the books I bought — for myself this time, as I’ve already given it multiple times as a gift without having read it myself — was Wild at Heart by John Eldredge.

The concept of this book is so appealing: Basically, men are pressured — especially by modern Christianity! — to be this “nice guy”, when that’s the exact opposite of both what he was meant to be AND what any woman really wants! Men want to have adventures and conquer things, and women want the knight to come rescue her and fight for her. There’s a lot more to the book, and it’s thick with cultural and pop references, and though it’s obviously geared toward men reading it, women have also been encouraged to read it in order to understand the inner longings of men.

I, for one, am the perfect stereotype of what is described in the book, as far as I can tell. I am drawn to the dangerous man, the knight, the cowboy, the outdoorsman. I want the man who’s going to run around conquering things all day, and come home to me at night and adore me, tell me of his conquests, and lay his tired head in my lap.

And it’s hard because those same wild boys are just that: Wild. They think that in order to “settle down” with someone, they have to… well… settle down. And in certain aspects it’s true, obviously, as I don’t want my man chasing every skirt he sees, but in most aspects of life, I’d want him to stay wild, like I found him.

But not only is society trying to tame him, often us women attempt to tame them without even realizing that we’re making them into something we don’t even want!

Beyond these wild men, I think we also expect our entire lives to be way more tame than they should be, or are.

Life is hard and painful and passionate and beautiful; we are broken, fallen, and constantly healing. But, for some reason, we expect that life is just going to be this easy, “la la la”, skipping-through-the-daisies kind of thing. And we get depressed when it’s not that. Whoever told us life is like that?! Why would we even expect that?!

Maybe between movies, TV, and our parents’ “good ole days” renderings of the past, we’ve come to have a distorted view of life as having this perfect domesticity… that it just doesn’t have.

So here’s to living with reckless abandon!
Sounding your barbaric “Yawp!” over the roofs of the world!
Becoming even more undignified than this!
Dancing with wildness and letting the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human!

Let the wild rumpus start!

(Ironically enough, stay tuned tomorrow for reflections on contemplative living… the polar opposite of wildness! Welcome to the wonder and majesty of the life God gave us!)