Endless loneliness.

If reading that title makes your mind begin to scream, your breathing quickens, and your stomach tightens, then you need to keep reading.

I don’t think there is a human condition worse than loneliness. Usually, loneliness is brought on by separation from people. Whether family, friends, or even an occasional relationship with someone who isn’t strongly connected to you. In my times of loneliness, I would have opted for even that marginal relationship.

My absolute worst time of each day started around 5 o’clock, with between 6 and 7 o’clock the hardest. It came like a subtle, thick fog-soup that rolled over my heart and mind every single day. No matter what I tried to do to distance myself from the fact that I was alone, sometimes it made it worse.

The automatic pictures began to play in my mind. Husbands and wives were coming home, kids were preparing to ambush them at the door, all vying for their attention to share what had happened in their day.

Once the initial greeting was over, they gathered in the kitchen while finishing touches were put on the evening meal. Kids scrambled onto their chairs, and Dad stole a kiss from his wife before they, too, were seated at the table. Plates were served while the chatter found a lower urgency. But it was then taken up with laughter, or even tears, of the frustration of growing children. But somehow it was always resolved. In my mind, even the house seemed to hug its occupants, reassuring them of its protective walls.

The picture continues through babies and younger children peeking out from a bath full of bubbles. Tickles and hugs were given without limit. Bedtime stories were picked up where they left off until little heads nodded off in safe, contented sleep. Nightlights were left on to guide a sleepy child later in the night to find the bathroom or crawl up into mom and dad’s bed. Even though the people in my daily scenario had settled down, the picture still held a strong sense of peace and safety.

Standing outside through the hours of this daily torture left me exhausted as I tumbled into my own bed—alone. For a few brief hours, I was paroled from these mental pictures only to be set on a new course of daytime activity.

People heavily invested in coworkers, agreeing to go for drinks or dinner together after work, or catch the latest movie. The list never ended. Every direction I turned, there was someone making plans to be with another person. I'm glad that the screaming that was always going on in my head never found its way out of my mouth. I'm sure I would have been committed to a mental ward somewhere.

Now, to be completely honest, there were a few times I dove headlong into relationships for brief periods. I can’t tell you exactly what drew these people, who I thought were going to be my forever friends and family, but something always did.

My most recent heartbreak due to desertion by a friend came with my latest move. Oh, what glorious expectations I had! This time of my life was finally going to be the fulfillment of the Word God gave me years ago—My later years will be greater than my former years.

For a brief moment, it appeared that I was about to walk in the long-awaited promise. Instead, the all too familiar fog of loneliness and depression rolled into my apartment. Along with it, this time was a massive dose of guilt for not forcing myself to become something that I am not—a social butterfly. God didn’t give me that personality.

But once the major disappointment grew quiet, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and made a conscious decision to venture out into this senior community where my life had been deposited. Four people began to look like they might hold the promise of at least one of them becoming that close, intimate one-on-one friendship my soul longs for. Slowly, it began to dawn on me that they, too, had other friends, family, and obligations that drew them away.

My heart has been crying out for months now. Who’s left? Where is that close friend that I was so sure we would be inseparable? There’s nothing like hearing the crickets of silence in your loneliness.

I had prayed a prayer just before moving here, asking the Lord to make my faith more real than it ever has been before. The plan I saw wasn’t anything like what has been unfolding for the past year.

Sitting on the side of my bed, crying out to the Lord to lift these disappointing trials, has been met with a resounding reassurance by the Holy Spirit, telling me that He is with me.

I’ve been hearing the Lord constantly reminding me of my prayer. It’s hard for us human beings to believe that God longs for our friendship even more than we long for the friendship of others. He waits in the line of people and activities to become empty to us so that we will draw near to Him and He will draw near to us.

I am ashamed to admit that my life’s desire to have that one close friend wasn’t always looking to Jesus as THE One who will fulfill that desire. The one who promises to stick closer than a brother. The one who promises to never leave me or forsake me. The only one who can and will meet my every emotional, mental, and physical need.

The argument I have had with the Holy Spirit is because I can’t SEE Jesus. It’s an internal dialog that I have to surrender to and trust that the two voices I hear are my own and that of the Holy Spirit, all by faith.

When I do this, every physical sense of loneliness fades away. I’m talking to my friend. He’s listening to my heart’s cry. He reassures me that He is truly here with me, and I am finally not alone. And I hear His voice even more when I submit to times of reading the Word.

I am facing another insurmountable situation again. One where people have already disappointed me with not doing what they said they would do. So the Holy Spirit sweetly reigns me back in closer to Him with the promise that He is working everything out. That he once again will overrule the world’s systems on my behalf, but it might not look like it did the last time.

So, I came to my keyboard today, right in the middle of all the swirling thoughts, to surrender what I think should happen and most of all, when it should happen, and trust God with it all. Especially the human element of people not doing what they say. I have to let go. Once I have followed all the Lord’s leading in doing my part, then I have to rest in Him.

When I try to force the situation, all I do is end up spinning my wheels, becoming more frustrated, and end up sitting on the edge of my bed at 3 a.m., reaching for God.

It’s a never-ending day, moment by moment walk with God. I’ve decided that I’ll never get it right. But the times that He draws me close, quiets my heart and whispers that He’s got me and not to be afraid, there is nothing in this whole world worth trading that for. No human relationship. No perfect mental pictures. Nothing. There’s nothing like having your heart and mind overshadowed by the Love of God when everything in you is screaming out for release.

If you find your life in the whirling pool of emotional craziness and hopelessness, let me assure you that there is a place you can go. God is waiting on you to run into Him and be saved.

I bless you.

 

Has anyone ever told you, “Don’t get your hopes up.”

When all hope is lost in our lives, we give up. I’ve been there. It took years of my soul being beaten down by my father’s broken promises. I truly believe that God gives all of us as children a sense of hope. The Biblical definition of hope is this,

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. vs. 6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

I placed all my hope in my father. Over and over, he proved unfaithful. I sought my father’s love continually. No matter how many times he disappointed me, I went right back believing that he didn’t mean to disappoint me, and THIS time it would be different. After I was in my late thirties, I finally ran out of hope and love for him. There just wasn’t another drop in my tank.

In a way, it was a relief. It was over. I’d not have to go another second waiting for him to come to some sort of epiphany—It never came. I had to face the truth at last. As I walked away from my earthly father, I saw my Heavenly Father walking toward me. He embraced not only my tired adult heart but my broken child heart still within me.

There’s not a feeling in this world like having the arms of God go around you, drawing you close. Nothing was being said, just a warmth and acceptance in that moment. Was there work to be done in me now? Yes, the path was before me to regain all the hope that I had lost since a child. That seemed like a daunting task. But the difference now was WHO I was putting my renewed hope in.

I searched the Word and the ways that God has been faithful to me in so many ways. I’d been a Christian for fifteen years. I’d come to know God’s faithfulness through so many other times in my life when I went to Him like I had my father. It took time. But two promises that God has never broken have been that He would never leave me or forsake me. These were the first two things I asked God to promise me.

I’d been left by my father, and still I hung on to the belief that he was coming back. He destroyed my trust in him too many times to count. One day I asked myself why did I kept doing this. I knew he wasn’t trustworthy or even had a glimmer of regret about anything he failed to do in my life. That undeniable childlike faith, trust, and hope that is deposited in each of us when we are born is oftentimes misplaced. We place it in a broken, sinful human. A parent, a teacher, a friend, or someone who looks dependable but proves otherwise.

When I realized that I had exhausted all my hope on my father, I cried to God, asking, “What do I do now? How do I ever get any hope back?”

The above scripture tells us that God is a REWARDER of those who diligently seek him. His character is flawless. Slowly, day by day, I took my brokenness to God. Some days I felt absolutely nothing. And then one day I began to feel a small sense of hope quicken about something I had gone to God about. But the underlying fact that I learned about hope wasn’t just being hopeful, but Who I was placing my hope in.

This time it was God. The God of the Word. The God who can not lie. Is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The God who doesn’t change how He feels about me. The God who never stops loving me.

For years, I blamed myself for my father’s flawed behavior. I thought it was me. That I was wrong. That it was because of something I did or didn’t do. Coming to finally see that it wasn’t me, it was my father who was broken. He didn’t know how to love or keep his promises. The day I realized that he never once meant to ever keep any promise he made, it was enlightening! When that fact dawned on me, I saw the total waste of all those years. I had placed my hope in someone who had never had any intentions of keeping a single promise he made. That was an eye-opening moment. Devastating but freeing. At last, I was finally able to face the truth.

The word says, in John 8:31, Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Although facing the truth about my relationship with my father was hard, it released me to begin to hope again. At that time, no one could even mention my father or speak to me about it without it devastating me. Today, I am so very grateful to say that all that is gone. God healed that childlike part of me. He replaced all my ability to hope again.

I always pray that anyone who takes the time to read what I post here will go away changed. This blog is written by someone who has had to walk out what she shares. It’s God in me reaching out through this page with an invitation to come to Him for everything you need.

I pray that you will take time now to go to God yourself. 

I bless you.