The Purity of Loneliness
The majority of my last year and a half has been spent realizing that people don't care about people as much as they should.
"Welcome to the world, Taylor."
Another large portion of this time has been me fighting for the renewed part of my heart that in fact cares about others more than my own life.
And it's made me lonely.
I'm lonely because I don't see many other people fighting this fight and my choice to do so isn't much of a companion.
This is not a post about a girl who does something better than you and is trying to inspire some awakening.
This isn't even a post about how tender Christians are and how hard it is to stay loving when unbelievers don't notice.
This is about what I've learned about keeping my heart alive and who Jesus is through seasons of loneliness.
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True loneliness isn't something you choose.
It's a sadness about being involved in the world and unnoticed by it.
College is a breeding ground for loneliness.
It's got the perfect set up:
100 different majors
300+ student organizations
diversity as priority
random roommate assignments
emphasis on independence and individualism...
These four years of pushing us students to rule their life and go their own way is beginning to wear me out.
I guess the college-idea is that to be the "best me I can be" I need to be untainted by the paths of others.
But, as a woman whose life goal is not to "be the best me I can be," I drown in this environment.
When my goal is to know Christ and to make Him known, ya, I do become the best me I can be, but my path looks far different from most college students.
Maybe I'm stating the obvious here, but being a Christian in college is lonely.
Even though I have Christian community, going home to my single room with a loveseat for one and hearing conversations through the wall reminds me I won't always have people in my life fighting alongside me for selfless hearts.
This loneliness has been particularly sharp the past few days.
Its had me in tears but it's also driven me into prayer and going back to the big questions.
"God I have You but I'm not satisfied. What am I missing?"
"God You said Yourself it was not good for Adam to be alone. You set up the Church Yourself so believers wouldn't go through life alone. Please restore these good things to me. Remind me that You are with me always..."
"Your Word says You are Comforter, Father, Friend, Lover...I'd like to experience that now."
I'm currently reading Beautiful Outlaw by John Eldredge and it's all about the personality of Jesus and experiencing Him.
It's floored me.
Having been brought to a place where all I want is a steady hand to hold me up, Jesus has given me more through revelation of who He really is.
Beautiful Outlaw describes Jesus as playful, cunning, fierce, kind, funny, irreverent, creative, and impatient with everything religious.
I took a moment after I read this and wrote down who I currently thought Jesus was:
subdued
restrained by His Father
meek
hunched
hard of hearing
Wow. Where did that even come from...
This is a false Christ and I shudder to put His name anywhere near words such as those.
This weakling of a god that's been in my head has rightly not earned my trust but has left me more lonely than ever as I try to work out of my own strength because my "god" is a wimp.
I confessed and prayed and asked for the strength to believe in real Jesus.
The Jesus who is extravagant, my lover, emotional, determined, intimate, a commander, a strong Father, fun, present, and fierce.
What has meant the most to me in this loneliness is Jesus' ferociousness. It may sound scary but not when you pair it with everything else He is:
Fiercely loyal
Fiercely loving
Fiercely protective
Fiercely patient
Fiercely powerful
Fiercely gentle
This is a God I can trust is walking next to me at every moment. And not only trust, but completely rejoice in because He's freaking awesome.
Another blessing of this loneliness is that it takes away some of the murkiness of life.
And what I mean by that is that it's given me purity of feeling as my Creator and Lover remind me of His tender power.
Isn't that just what happens when you're in the presence of someone dear to you?
You're calm, reassured, content, refreshed, loved...everything else just fades away because there's no place you'd rather be.
Jesus has done some pretty powerful things in my heart through those times of just Him and me alone on my couch with tissues strewn everywhere.
He's begun to untangle the lies I've believed about a distant god that I fell into in high school.
He's begun to free me from hurts from past relationships that I believed I would always be a little sad about.
He's begun to put contentment, security, peace, and joy back into my dry heart.
He's begun to challenge me to pray huge prayers of restoration and revival for the world, on my campus, in my life, and in friend's lives.
Loneliness doesn't always have to be a dark place.
We have the Light of the World inside of us and have been named Lights ourselves.
Not even the harshness of loneliness can change that reality.
The purity of loneliness is letting it be a channel for Jesus' love to rush in and clean out every murkey and weak belief we hold about Him, our past, and our future.
"Father to the fatherless, defender of widows--this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families; He sets the prisoners free and gives them joy."
~ Psalm 68:5-6