Object of Eve's Affection

In Genesis 3 we read about The Fall and how one wrong move affected the whole of mankind. I must have read or heard this read a thousand times. We're told that the Garden of Eden was a place where man walked with God and there was pure and perfect communion between God and man; it is a place that we have been separated from and an intimacy that we strive to have again. Yes, because of Adam and Eve's disobedience we all now wrestle with sin but look closely at what was taken from them at the moment of their judgement:

16 To the woman he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."
17 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." ESV

Look at the difference between what was taken from them; they both lost the easy life they had with God and inherited a life of pain and struggle but the arenas in which they would struggle were different.

With Eve, what sticks out to me most is when God says, "Your desire shall be for your husband..." This is one of her key consequences; that she would desire her husband. That struck me weird because wouldn't you consider that a good thing? Most married couples break up because one or the other no longer desires their spouse. So because this is a consequence, a part of her discipline, we can reason that her desires were elsewhere; more specifically, her desires were for God.
Think about how God has made women; we are naturally more affectionate, compassionate, tender-hearted and sensitive. Think about how all of that was once solely and completely directed at God and how, all at once, it was turned away from Him and turned to man. Imagine that all your passions are instinctively for Him. Now imagine Him saying to you, 'No longer will your desire and longing be for Me but it will be for your husband.' Can you imagine the devastation Eve must have felt?! We can't even begin to fathom the misery Eve was undergoing at that moment because her starting point is our finish line; what we spend our whole lives trying to acheive, in falling completely in love with God and having everything in our being adore Him without contest, she had and she is being told that she'll spend the rest of her life with her desires drawn back to her husband like a bad magnet.

So what does this say for us? Daughters of Eve, what does this say for us? I think for us it means that we were made to love God. I think it means that because everything, that comes natural to us, was once only for God that it is still meant for Him.

I encourage you to really meditate on Eve and on what she had, what she lost, and what she was left with.