Transforming our loneliness into anything good has moments of impossibility… and then there is God. He can take those intensely lonely times and softly create a megaphone of His peace and joy. Nope, not saying I am good at this. I am s
Loneliness during chronic illness is a tough one, even for “loner” type individuals.
In moments of some of my most intense loneliness, I noticed how the Internet refused to work, my phone would die, and the quiet became deafening.
It can be a painful ongoing process but the quieter it got the more I could hear from God. I could hear that I was running away trying to avoid some of the pain that I did not want to deal with. Truthfully I was not even capable of dealing with some of the remaining issues. I needed to hear God’s clear voice.
3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
~ Psalm 29:3-9 (NIV)
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord thunders over the mighty waters.
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is majestic.
5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon leap like a calf,
Sirion like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the Lord strikes
with flashes of lightning.
8 The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;
the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
9 The voice of the Lord twists the oaks
and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”
That just might be why it got so quiet. So I could hear what God wanted me to listen to and show me. So I could let Jesus fill my thoughts instead of the noise of useless things in life. Yes, even the useless relationships.
Part of the quiet was to reveal the pain. Without quiet, I have trouble hearing what truly needs to be dealt with. I am good at letting go, moving on and pretending the pain does not exist. Well, it does exist and there are some things that I really still do have to address.
Without the intense quiet of chronic illness and isolation, the Lord’s comfort could not be felt as well. His love got lost sometimes in the pain I was so busy trying to ignore, my fault, not His.
Resting in Jesus’ love is not as simple as we sometimes make it out to be. Life is complicated and true resting means trusting that the complications will get sorted out, God’s way. That is a lot of trust for some of us.
It removed any control I thought I had. It required me to fall into an abandon that was quite honestly a bit too scary for me to face. The isolation and illness forced it. The quieter it got the more the Lord allowed me to take it one itty bitty step at a time.
God keeps it simple with His promises, allowing our complications to get reduced to His awesome love for us. Therefore resting in the love of Jesus really is quite simple.
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
~ John 6:29 (NIV)
Ohhhhhhh but it does not always feel so simple. And there lies another blessing of loneliness, putting our emotions into proper perspective. They really do not carry the weight that they try to impose on us. They are actually quite meaningless at times.
I say that with a smile. There are a ton of meaningless things in life. Right along with many joys we miss out on.
A recent blow reminded me that emotions are nothing in comparison to the Lord; who He is, what He is capable of, how much love He exudes regardless of my emotions. It is about God, not me and useless emotions.
As I recovered from the blow within moments, letting the emotions roll from fear to anger to disappointment to acceptance, then I could not help to feel the love that the Lord was trying to show me.
The feeling of love and acceptance that the Lord shows me supersedes the useless emotions of life. He allowed me to feel the fear, then the anger, then the disappointment and comforted me as I moved quickly to acceptance.
I can walk out the blows of life better when I am engulfed in God’s word, the Lord’s comfort, and faith that He already has it all sorted out for His greater good.
The Holy Spirit gave me the right words to respond to the encounter in love, not fear or anger or even the disappointment.
I am truly not alone. I am deeply loved and cared for. God does provide for my needs regardless of others or my abilities. There is no lack, there is abundance. And it is simply okay to have to repeat this many times to let it fully sink in!!!!
That is why I read the Bible over and over again. To hear the truth over and over, letting it sink in deeply, to be able to see God’s faithfulness played out in my life and others.
