The Loneliest Moment

What is the loneliest moment you’ve ever endured? Being isolated in your tiny apartment during a snowstorm? Sitting at Christmas dinner as the only single person? Calling friends to join you for dinner and no one can because their kids have baseball or its date night or they have other plans? For me, loneliness is often exacerbated when I am in a crowd.

I go through periods of personal, inner strength when loneliness does not bother me. I enjoy time with friends when they’re free, and I enjoy times of solitude by my choice or theirs. Then, at other times, I walk on a forest path overshadowed by trees with only intermittent rays of sunshine peeking through. It is very rare for me that the shadows eat my soul like a ravenous wolf in the middle of winter. But it does happen.

Today was not one of those days. Today was the loneliness that weighs heavy like a blanket. Like when you’re a kid hiding from shadows and you pull the covers over your head but if you don’t leave a little hole, the thing that should bring you comfort soon becomes a thing that threatens to suffocate you. That kind of loneliness.

I am thirty-eight-years-old. If you like comedy, I can tell you the story of my dating history. Today I’m not laughing. I’m thirty-eight-years-old, never married and no prospects in sight. I’ve never had children and at this point I guess I never will. And that’s why I was crying today.

Is there something about me that God sees and says, “Nope. Not mom material”? I know in my head that God’s plan is perfect. Of course it is! Except, I sometimes think, in this area. Didn’t God create human beings to be in community? And anyway, doesn’t American culture tell me I deserve to be happy? Don’t you understand, God? This would make me happy!

"All the bitter weary ways

The endless striving day by day

You barely have the strength to pray

In the valley low.

And how hard your fight has been,

How deep the pain within

Wounds that no one else has seen

Hurts too much to show.

All the doubt you’re standing in between

All the weight that brings you to your knees

He knows, He knows

Every hurt and every sting

He has walked through suffering

He knows, He knows

Let your burdens come undone

Lift your eyes up to the One

Who knows . . ."

Jeremy Camp: “He Knows”

Jeremy Camp lost his first wife and wrote that song as he learned to live with that loss. He understands loneliness, surely. But he’s telling me, through that song, that God understands loneliness, too. He understands all of our pain and suffering.

Even the dark blanket of loneliness?

On the night He was betrayed, Jesus predicted Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s desertion. He went to the Garden to pray, and He asked His closest friends to pray with Him. “And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.’ And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, ‘So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?’” (Matthew 26:39-40)

He was betrayed, questioned unlawfully, scourged, beaten, mocked, forced to carry His own means of death, and raised up on a cross as a criminal. Romans were skilled torturers, conquerors, and rulers. They knew how to assimilate the cultures they conquered. They knew how to control the masses: publicly punish criminals, and the rest will stay in line. So Jesus was hung in a public place.

He was betrayed and abandoned by His friends. But He was not alone. There were gawkers and finger-pointers and mockers. And just when the loneliness of His impending death began to overwhelm Him, “Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, Lama sabacthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” And moments later, He died.

He knows. He does. He really does. His was the loneliest moment in history, when the God-head, the Trinity, God-the-three-in-one, somehow separated and Jesus was left to face the grave alone. Alone. An eternal being, who has always Been, who has always Been in community, was suddenly forsaken. Do we quite understand what that means? I doubt it.

"Every time that you feel forsaken

Every time that you feel alone

He is near to the broken hearted

Every tear

He knows, He knows"

He knows. He really does.