“Trying to avoid something is the textbook stirah to wanting something.”
That is not true. That is exactly the type of stira which I (and I think DY) was referring to.
I once heard the following D’var Torah:
In davening somewhere during Elul/Tishrei (either in slichos or RH or YK davening I think) we say: “Aneinu k’mo sheanisa l’Avraham Avinu b’Har HaMoriah” What does this mean?
Apparently, Avraham Avinu was davening the whole time during Akeidas Yitzchak that he shouldn’t have to kill Yitzchak. But at the same time, the Midrash says that he did it “b’leiv shaleim”.
So we see from here that a Jew can have two opposite emotions at the same time. You can be accepting and happy about a situation at the same time that you are davening to get out of it.
This is the opposite of the “Serenity Prayer”:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”
We say that they are NOT two different types of situations. The same situation can involve both accepting and trying to change it at the same time.
So it’s not necessarily a stira to say that one can daven to die al Kiddush Hashem while trying to avoid it.
The only problem in our case is that we are talking about davening to suffer. I don’t think we see such a thing anywhere else. By Avraham Avinu it was the other way around.
But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be true just because we don’t see it anywhere else. Dying al kiddush Hashem may be its own category.
On the one hand, one can argue that Avraham Avinu was davening not to have to do it. (which could prove that one doesn’t daven to die al kiddush Hashem). But on the other hand, that was killing his son and not about being killed himself. And it’s interesting that we only see that Avraham Avinu davened to not have to do it. What about Yitzchak Avinu? Why doesn’t it mention that he davened to not have to be sacrificed?