About a week and a half ago, I wrote this post in a moment of weakness and loneliness. I hope it can encourage you all in your lives.
Earlier today, I had a sudden overwhelming feeling that I was not wanted. That my friends from school suddenly grown tired and annoyed with me. I felt in that instant that I meant nothing to anyone I have grown to love and cherish.
“No one has really talked to me today. Or yesterday. I’ve tried to talk to everyone but no one is really responding. Have I done something wrong? Am I too much, too talkative for them? Do any of them even like me? Why do I even bother? I lose all of my friends eventually anyway. They don’t want me; no one wants me. The universe is ignoring my existence.”
These thoughts, and so many others like them, bounced around my head in the matter of seconds. And this kind of thinking has been commonplace in my life for so long. I have struggled with negative self-thinking daily, and in the past year, it has been even worse. So much so that recently, I found a journal from the fall saying, “I don’t mind shouting aimlessly into the void, as long as the void remembers to shout back from time to time.” Even then, I felt as though nothing I did ever mattered or gained attention from anyone.
And then, within the same few seconds these ideas came flooding back into my mind, so did ideas that fought back against it. “No, no daughter. No, my child, I want you, I hear you, I delight in you when you speak.”
“No, she is precious, she is needed. She is not ignored at all. He hear’s all of it, He sees all of it.”
“Stop hurting me, I am safe in God’s arms.”
For the first time I can remember, when the negative voices arose, positive ones rose up as well. Instead of being sucked into the darkness of shame, hatred, and pain, I found myself caught in the middle of a war between the lies that Satan and my own sin nature had fed me for so long, and the truth that has finally been taking hold and growing in my soul and mind. And of its own accord, without prompting from anyone of my friends that I used to cling to.
It is hours later, and since then, I have talked to most of my friends, all good, positive conversations. Yet here I am, still wrestling with myself non-stop. Constantly feeling like any second the rug could be pulled out from under me and they could all be gone in a heartbeat. Constantly reminding myself that they all love me and that they would never just leave. I have been constantly trying to remind myself to think rationally. Some of them are at work, others are living their lives with other friends who deserve just as much love and attention as I do.
I am an incredibly emotional, extroverted person. I thrive off the energy of my friends. But when they are not around and they aren’t talking to me for any number of reasons, my energy and my outlook on life drops dramatically. I am slightly ashamed about this, but I understand it is a part of who I am and who God made me to be. Thinking with introverted rationale is incredibly difficult for me.
So why now? Why has this all been happening now? Why am I fighting so vehemently
within myself tonight? Because today the universe, the void, Creation, has been silent to me. But why has it been silent today after days of being open and loud and learnable? And how do I make it stop? How do I silence the ferocity and forte of the lies?
I often have to remind myself in these moments that I am not the first person to feel as if God, the universe, everyone around them has stopped talking to them. That is one of the reasons, even before I finally handed every bit of my life over to God’s control once and for all, I felt called to write. So others will not have to feel as lonely as I do at times.
Now, in the freshness of that feeling of loneliness, I feel compelled to write through my pain. Not only to process why I am struggling so badly, but to give those who are hurting a way to ease that hurt. Most importantly, it is through moments like these where God seems to speak the loudest, where His glory shines through our cracked, clay pots the brightest.
Today, the universe was silent and ignored me, because I had ignored it. I felt disconnected and forcible removed from happiness and peace because I decided not to give my time today to God. I woke up, and immediately focused on others things rather than opening my Bible like I have been and writing in my bible study journal. Since the beginning of the month, I have consistently been desiring to read the Bible, not because I know I’m supposed to, but because I’ve been craving it. Recently, I have been getting healthier mentally, physically, and spiritually. My anxiety and such things have been the lowest and least noticeable they have been in a long time because it’s all been in God’s hands.
Today though, it seems that I did not even acknowledge God’s movement in my life. So God was silent and ignored me because I decided to ignore Him. This is not how we should handle a relationship at all! To feel the presence of God, and to see Him constantly working in our lives, we must be close enough to Him to understand that it’s all for Him in the first place.
God never desires for His children to feel lonely. In the Bible, He is constantly calling us to draw near to Him. In Isaiah 55:1-3, He calls out to those who need His compassion: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”
We must be close enough to God’s Word, constantly exposing ourselves to it and the truth within, to be able to hear it, and in turn to be close enough to feel we are heard.
Learning through weakness,
Emily E.
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