Faith-Filled Friday

Faith Filled Friday is back again. Welcome everyone. 

Lately I have been trying to understand the geography of loneliness. Loneliness can hurt so bad that it's as if you stand before a canyon and scream just to hear your own echo and it too never chooses to make a presence. Don't get me wrong; it is nice to sometimes have the peace in being the lone soul of my abode. But mostly it is a lifelong emotion, a feeling that hurts deeply. I asked myself a question the other day while I was driving: "What is God trying to show me in with this constant companion of loneliness?" I have heard many people say: "You're not alone if you have Christ." This said by the people who have someone to come home to, the never-lonely.

Sure, I get it; God loves me but even God created a partner for Adam in the midst of the beautiful garden. I have not only prayed to God about this, but had conversations with him from the soul. I have asked for signs and understanding of many things in life and this was no different. I have asked Him for an awakening and, yes, I have asked him to connect me with just one person on this earth that I can share an unending loyal companionship.

I have been so patient, so understanding. I have seen friends I grew up with get married and divorced a few times over. Yet I grow older alone. I can feel the opportunity to have children slip away. When I have trusted to talk with friends and dared to mention how lonely I am, they tell me I should be so happy and that I don't know how lucky and good I have it. Really? Why must people completely discount other people's feelings and emotions because they judge their life to be so much harder?  Perhaps it is my own fault to ask a person who isn't lonely themselves.

But therein lies the problem: There is no one to really talk to about this. It is not failure due to not trying. It has made me even lonelier because it feels no one is there to talk to, and I don't hold it against them. I know that God is there, but it doesn't change the fact I am here alone and misunderstood by people that to me seem like they have everything in life that I have wanted most and worked incredibly hard for, for example, a family. When I see father playing with their children it makes me so happy to witness such things, where children are happy and they are not fatherless. But it also has left me crying in the moments afterwards as I sit silently…alone.

It all came to a head the other day and I screamed at God to just see me, hear me, help me, to stop abandoning me. I asked him what price I had not paid, what leaf I left un-turned. What rock I had not skipped across the caring waters of being a good man for other's and the world. Why does He deem me not worthy to be trusted with love? How can I project it from my deepest abyss to the world?

I have always asked God to make me a better man. To let me learn not only more about the world through life experiences but more about me and the man I aspire to be so one day if someone does come along to love and care for that I can be the best man I can possibly be not only for them but for myself. I don't want to be blinded by the pain, but be even more freed because of it, the kind of freedom where I stand from the plateau of understanding others who are going through it. I keep hearing this whisper from within say: "In God's timing, not mine." and that is a plateau all to itself within.

Blind faith is a mighty beautiful thing, but sometimes its journey of holding on surely hurts. Keep holding on to any of you that are there yourselves.

Much love everyone

John