Up

Loneliness creeps in. Seeping in the cracks. Only a little bit at a time, but enough to disturb my sleep, invade my quiet thoughts. Loneliness - a missing of something I may have never had at all, wanting someone to share my life with. I have forgotten, quite honestly, what it means to be in love. One day I will have to relearn.

I struggled this morning, bogged down by this feeling. I spent my drive to work talking to my Father, knowing that I was losing control of my emotions because it had been so long since I'd taken them to Him. We are in constant conversation, but I hadn't dedicated time in a while. I knew that He allowed this feeling of loneliness for a reason...

A dear friend would suggest later that God lets us feel the loneliness to remind us to look up. To look towards Him (from where does our hope come from??).

The clouds rolled in this afternoon, threatening rain on our game night downtown. I looked up at the sky, my heart still heavy.
"Fill my empty places," I prayed. "Keep this desire in me, but teach me how to seek You when this loneliness hits. Make me the right person. And please... break through those clouds."

I looked out of the window of my little station wagon then. Just to watch the black cloud overhead split open and sunlight pour out. Rays of light, piercing the darkness.

The wind would blow for a while longer, pushing that black cloud across the sky. I took my journal and headed to the park where I sat down for the first time in a few weeks and wrote out my prayers...

Recognizing the deep need in my heart to go and be with the children. To laugh and play in the streets. To be still for a while. To talk to my Father. Fulfilling those things washed away the loneliness. Not the desire for my own family one day. Just the threatening loneliness - suddenly overwhelmed by a love so deep.

So when sadness overcomes, when loneliness breaks in, when hopelessness sneaks by... I will look up. To Him, the One who has overcome the world. The One who gave me this desire in the first place. The One who made me with a plan in mind and who has been working diligently to get me where I need to be.

And He will break through the clouds. Raining down love, shining His light.