Loneliness

Ah the glorious feeling. That feeling of being surrounded by people yet none of them know who you are. It’s such an interesting phenomenon. I’ve felt it more this year than ever before. It’s even more interesting because I’ve never had this much time in the public. All day I spend my time interacting with people and then I come home with the same feeling: nobody sees me.

I remember describing this to a friend through teary eyes over breakfast tacos in our local fast food Mexican restaurant not too long ago. She sat across from me nodding with understanding eyes at my attempts to describe how unloveable and broken I felt. She reminded me of a chapter in The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller that speaks to being fully known and fully loved and what the knowledge of that does to our hearts and mind. I took it in. Sat with it. Held on to it. Held on the idea that if no other soul loved me, truly loved me, I could still count on Him to.

I savored that. Felt a bit better about myself for a short while and then started to question that too. If God truly knew every sin and every pain I felt then why wasn’t He doing anything about it.

I looked at my life of broken and torn relationships with people I loved so dearly, I looked at the body He had given me that was still sick and needing of physical healing, and I looked at the hopes and dreams I had that kept crashing to floor because “life said otherwise” and said “God I don’t see this as being fully loved. How can this be love?”

And thus the loneliness and isolation kicked back in, sinking its teeth even deeper this time.

The past nine months I’ve been faced with several challenges. Ones I truly don’t think I could have imagined occurring but yet they did. I was undone. Broken. Torn to pieces. As I started to put myself back together, tried to again trust that He loved me completely, truly, fully, something else would happen and there I was, broken again. In a journal entry I sent to my longtime best friend I said:

Maybe that resonates with you. I hope it doesn’t. But if it does I want you to at least know that you’re not completely alone. At least someone else is out there feeling that too.

I took a picture during my walk the other night. Just a pretty picture of downtown as the sun sets. It’s funny because I’m walking alone, something I enjoy occasionally, yet dread consistently. While Hannah was in town she’d walk with me, and when Jill, Lawryn, or Cami are available they’ve walked with me too. Sometimes I call my grandparents or brother, but sometimes I just walk. Alone. No music. Just observing. It’s harder to do that because I miss people that way, but on this particular walk I felt like I wasn’t completely alone. He was there. Walking with me as He always has. Even when I didn’t want Him to. Right beside me, before me, behind me. Doesn’t completely fix the loneliness, but maybe it’s the beginning of Him shifting something for me. Maybe not. Whatever it is, if you’re walking lonely today, I see you. He does too. Even if that’s hard to believe. He does. Your loneliness has not gone unnoticed.

Below is poem by Grace Noll Crowell. I hope it brings you some peace tonight:

Sympathy

If Jesus had not walked the earth,

Footsore and weary, long ago

Oh, I might be so very tired,

And even He could scarcely know

The depths of my discouragement,

Or just how tired I might grow.

If Jesus had not suffered much,

And borne the greatest agony,

I might have more than I could bear

Of pain, and He could scarcely see

How great would be my suffering

Or what that pain would mean to me.

But oh, my Jesus understands,

And looks in loving sympathy;

"Like as a father pitieth

His child," 'tis thus He pities me,

And I am glad that Jesus knows

When I am walking wearily.

You are loved dear friend. Hold on.