A Deployed Heart Speaks About Loneliness
Meg Chaney
These months of the year are always some of the toughest for me. February and March are always the months that loneliness hits. I’m a little bit tired, a little bit “over it”, a lot feeling separated from those around me.
Moving every few years is hard. Forming relationships, never stops being difficult. A pandemic has only amplified this divide. Circles have become smaller. Military families? Are often left on the outside. We just haven’t been around long enough. Circles are made small to protect one other, but that’s exactly where I’ve felt even more on the outside.
Loneliness, is a very real feeling that I’ve often struggled with. Isn’t it true, that you can be surrounded by a room of people and still feel lonely?
One thing I always want to do with my writing is to pull people in. Make them feel connected. Make them be included.
My transparency may be a lot for people. I’m introverted, so that energy I give out is all or nothing. That effort I made? It probably took a lot out of me. And so, when it’s not reciprocated, I tend to draw back in my shell. Maybe this isn’t as it should be. Maybe I should try harder. I live with those regrets as well.
But loneliness is an honest and true feeling.
Here’s a truth that I need to preach to myself today: We don’t serve a God who is unfamiliar with our sufferings (Hebrews 4:15). If we’ve felt it, He’s felt it even more so.
Think about it. Jesus came into this world, surrounded himself with a tight knit group of people. Then, when He was at His weakest, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, those closest to him were falling asleep instead of supporting him in prayer .
“Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is swallowed up in sorrow —to the point of death. Remain here and stay awake with Me.” Going a little farther, He fell facedown and prayed, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.””
Three times Jesus went away to pray, and three times He returned, only to find His closest friends fast asleep. He recognizes the enormity of the impending situation, and no one else was there to share the burden. He was utterly alone.
And then, in the loneliest act of all, He dies on the cross, for you and for me. In that moment of death, He’s forsaken by the world, and by God himself. With the weight of sin and death on his shoulders, He is more utterly alone than any of us will ever experience.
“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Why are You so far from my deliverance
and from my words of groaning?”
I don’t share this to belittle human loneliness and suffering. We’re faced with an incredible amount in this world. I share this, as a reminder, that He understands. He knows what true loneliness is like. We haven’t experienced anything in this world that He doesn’t understand, that He can’t empathize with.
It’s a dark thought, to think of Him on the cross utterly alone. He took that gigantic weight so that we would never have to experience it.
Yet, isn’t that amazing?
Yes, this day-to-day world can still feel incredibly lonely. Military moves, and Covid-19 haven’t helped with that at all!
But it’s so nice to be reminded that we’re never alone. Loneliness is a normal human state of being.
We’ll all experience it. We’ll all suffer through it.
And we are all, definitely, not alone in it. We all know the pull of loneliness. We all know the feeling of dark days.
And we can all celebrate the reality of Easter.
He overcame it.
That darkness? That loneliness? That sickness? That death? All those dark things that make our current world so hard to stomach, He has already overcome for eternity!
You’re not alone friend.
Loneliness can truly be rough, but you and I serve a God who can truly understand. Truly relate. And who has already conquered it all!