Desire or Need?

At one end of the continuum, these desires [love, sex, admiration, protection, respect, attention, etc.] are normal and appropriate.  Call them mere or simple desires.  Without them you are not human.  At the other, they are complicated desires, self-serving demands that are guaranteed to damage relationships.  As you drift from desire to demand the boundary is fuzzy but the distinction is critical. — Edward T. Welch from Running Scared

When I read this passage I realized what a slippery slope we are on.  At any moment my desire to be loved can turn into a demand to be loved which causes anger and can spread into fear, worry, and anxiety that we won’t get those desires which have been converted into needs.

There’s only one solution, to take our eyes off ourselves and look to love others:

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.  Romans 12:10

When I was reading this passage, I began to look around and think, “What does love demand of me right this minute”?  This has been a difficult week for me.   But realizing how quickly my desires could slide into needs–needs to be understood, needs to be listened to, and “needs” to be seen as right–I was able to flip my mind over to “what would love demand now.”  I say this NOT to lift myself up, because I didn’t do this perfectly nor as gracefully as I would have liked, but to testify that loving others gets you off the slippery slope in a hurry.