When did you feel lonely today?

I would by no means consider myself a lonely person. I have a great family and friends - both near and far. I have many people I love, and I firmly believe that they love me back. With all my heart I wish the same for you.

However, I am convinced that you can relate to this feeling of feeling of loneliness. I know that I can. This strange feeling creeping up on me, this little voice telling me that I am all alone, all by myself. Sometimes it even occurs in a crowd! It is that sneaky. Or else you have been running away every time this feeling creeps up on you. Running away, seeking comfort in food, socializing, traveling, buying things, looking good, getting good grades, even trying to become a better person, whatever it is. I feel you, I have been there too, and I cannot promise that I will never do it again. To just run away. But God who lives deep down in my soul is stopping me in my running saying

Be still my soul. Be still and know that I am God.

And because He is God. I can rest. I do not have to run away from how I feel. I can just look into my heart, however surprising or irrational my finding will be. Because it is truly frustrating to look inside the heart and find something you do not expect, and do not wish to find. How in the world can I feel lonely right now? I have checked off every thing on the list to avoid that. I cannot do more. Also, God has blessed me abundantly. I am so grateful for the people He has placed in my life. How can I allow myself to still feel this, when my God has given me everything I need? It makes no sense. So I can just look at my heart and cry out to God, for Him to look at it too, with me. It is not how I want it to be, but it is as it is. And truth is, loneliness is to be found there. It is not on the surface, it is not easily accessible. But deep down, it is there. How irrational it might sometimes seem to be. It is there. The world we live in claims to be rational and driven by rational decision making, and I realize how often that creeps into my spiritual life. I even try to put emotions into the box with the tag 'rationality'. And God is looking at it with me saying

You feel lonely and that's okay.

It takes courage to look into the heart. But having God as a stabile foundation, it is ten times less scary. Because I know that God will never show me parts of my heart that are too much for me to see. Throughout the years God has slowly revealed parts of me so when I was ready to see them He showed them to me, not before that. And I know that there are ugly truths about myself that God has not revealed to me yet, because I am not ready for them yet. So if you see the loneliness in yourself, I believe it is a good sign. God desires to be in that particular place of your heart with you. Because loneliness is not something we have to desperately run away from. I learned this when I was sitting in my room one day, feeling desperately lonely for absolutely no reason. And I made some calls, which was great, but it was still there. And the only place I could turn to was God. And He showed me how beautiful of a place it was. This place of loneliness. Because it showed that God has opened a place in my heart that only Heaven can fulfill. He knows that if he gives me a loneliness that people can fulfill, I will turn to them. But sometimes He gives me this gift of a deep loneliness, that makes my heart not only turn to Him but run to Him. And maybe it is not something He gives me, but something that has always been there in me. But I have been too busy to see it.

A piece of my truest identity.

A mark from Eden.

Through which He speaks.

Anna, you are made for Eternity. You were made for Heaven. The more you go deeper with me, the more you long intimacy. The more you are not satisfied with intimacy found in this world. This existential loneliness is my cry out to you. It is me saying 'I miss you and I want to be closer to you than I have been'. I am a God who seeks you, who desires you, who misses you.

Wow. This is our God. And as hard as it can be to just sit in loneliness that hurts. To just accept it and not put it away. I encourage myself and you as well to ask the Holy Spirit for courage to step into our hearts no matter what we find there.

Sometimes our feelings are not reflections of what is happening around us. But God whispering into our souls, speaking the language of our hearts.

And God is a God of love. A God of relations. The Trinity. And we are made in His likeness. Our hearts ache for the truest deepest sense of intimacy. The deepest form of union. With God himself.

Let us not be surprised when we find a loneliness that falls outside the box of worldly rationality. But let us gently and courageously take it and send it upwards to Heaven. Up where it came from.

Up where it belongs, and where it also will be satisfied.

When did God call you to himself? When did you feel lonely today?