Wild At Heart

I have been reading “Wild At Heart” By John Eldredge. This book is about a man rediscovering his heart, how God made man to be, and how men long for Adventure, to be in dangerous situations, and to be seen as danger. To have that desire to be in the wild is something that comes from God, God made the earth wild, untamed, and potentially dangerous—although, in the beginning man and beast lived together in peace, which is why I said ‘potentially.’—and God looked at what He had made and saw that it was good.


About two years ago, I started having a reoccurring dream; I started having it a week or so after having gone to the beach. In this dream I would be running out to the beach, or already in the water, and I would hear shouting, screams of terror from the shore. In curiosity I looked out to see what was all the commotion about, and I would see a fin, a dark dorsal fin circling near me. In this dream, I would bring myself to safety, and without fail every time, someone was in the water that couldn’t get out. Sometimes it was a pretty teenage girl about my age, or it was a baby. But every time there was a girl in danger. The shark circled around it’s prey and I couldn’t just stand and watch. So when I first began having this dream, I would find a seashell, and go as far out into the water as that girl was, and I would jab that shell into the palm of my hand. Blood would rush out and I would yell in pain…and then deliberately place my bleeding hand in the water. The shark would then come at me, and the girl would be free, either by someone getting her or her just swimming back herself. But I would never survive, in that dream I died doing what in a sense I have always wanted to do; to die for the life of another. But the dream kept coming back, the shark being fiercer each time, and I would wake up more and more scared than the last time. Finally in the middle of the dream, I decided to myself, that I was not going to die, but neither could I stand there watching someone die. It seemed that I was being forced to act, forced to die. But I decided I controlled the battle. So when everyone started screaming about a shark, I did not bring myself first to safety, I swam to meet the shark. I waited as it circled around me and the girl. And then it charged me, as it came as fast as it possible could I swung a punch. Hitting the shark straight in the nose it slowed down considerably, and while it was stunned I grabbed it’s tail and threw it on the beach. I carried the girl out of the water and began to beat the shark as hard as I could and continually until my hands were bleeding and the shark’s skull didn’t seem like a skull at all; it was mush.

The point of this story is not that I am a brutal shark slayer; in fact, I have a fear of sharks instilled in the back of my mind to this day. But more than that, I have a sense of duty, something that God gave me as a man; a sense to protect, at any cost. And isn’t that what God did when He sent Jesus to die on the cross? He came to protect us from what was inevitably coming. He came to save us from that shark circling around us. And as I am made in God’s image, that is in my heart. Not only to protect, but to conquer. That no fear in my heart pulls me down. God did not give us a spirit of fear, but instead of courage. When people say that we are created in God’s image, if when God said that He was speaking physically, I do not know. But He was most defiantly speaking in different terms as well. Such as we are made as God is a Triune body, Him the Trinity, us the Tricotomy—I will expand of that later if I feel like it— there is more to it. You see, Adam; Man, was made as the part of God filled with Passion, Adventure, Danger, Wild. Whereas Eve; Woman, was made more towards Compassion, less leaning towards Danger, and Wild. Not that they would have no heart for it, but not a heart longing for it like Man. But have we as Men lost that heart? Several years ago, when I was about 8 as I remember, I had another reoccurring dream.

When we lived in Americus GA, we lived on this little road, and we had a fairly…fair sized house compared to where we now, but our family has fairly dispersed since. Not dispersed, but not as many people live here as past. And in that house you would drive into a parking thing, to your left would be a shack thing, which we did laundry in. On the right was the door, you walked into that and straight ahead was my parent’s room, turn left and you are in the kitchen. Go forward straight and you have where we did school—we were homeschooled then to—and beyond that was a hallway leading to the other rooms, and a bathroom. But back in the kitchen, go forward just a little, and turn to the right there is a swinging door, no handle, it just swings open and shut. Beyond that door was the living room; and that room and that door are the basis of my dream as it goes.

You see, in my dream it was a typical night, we were sitting in the living room watching TV as I remember, vaguely. And suddenly, we all decide that we are hungry, or someone told us we were, I cannot remember which. So we walk into the kitchen, and I went ahead of them all. But as soon as that door opened, so did our oven. (Bear with me here; I have a point to this.) And out of the oven jumped several wolves, growling, snarling, and ready to attack, and out of fear all of my family ran into the living room. As soon as the door shut, there was neither trace nor sound of those wolves. And so we did the over and over again, each time wolves jumping out of the oven, we never ate in that dream. And I had this dream for several weeks, when one night, in that dream, we all cowering in that room, I got mad. I stood up, and charge alone into that kitchen, the wolves jumped out, the door swung close, and they didn’t do anything. I denounced that I had reason to fear them and bargained with them for them to leave. And they agreed, strangely, yes, they spoke to me, in English.

The point I see in this is two, which you may or may not agree with. The Wolves represent two different things, at different points, you see, the dream doesn’t make sense to me unless I look at it backwards. After so long of having a charge and passion, someone came and told my heart that its ferocity was wrong, and they asked me to leave it behind, hurt by the words that they used I did.

But the Wolves from the beginning of the story are different, instead of being—in a figurative viewpoint—the wolf inside of you. The part of your heart that is fierce, wants to be seen as a force to be reckoned with. It is your drive, as a man, to be in the face of danger and conquer it, in turn putting fear in the heart of your oppressor.

These Wolves instead of energizing you, they put you down. Put fear in your heart making you not want to be so great, telling you that you CANNOT be that great. They are the Wolves that tear you down.

And then there is the defining seen, where you get back that wolf. You get back your heart, not the heart of fear, the heart that God originally meant for you to have. When you go forward, in the eyes of others nothing but an 8 year old boy, and you go and you face your fears. And you say to the Wolves that make you fear; “Enough! I want my heart back.”

Thanks for reading,
 
Jack,