Only the Lonely

I’ve been struck by the sheer loneliness that seems to grip so many people. They can be in a crowded room and still seem so isolated and ‘alone’. They would like to connect, but they really can’t seem to do it. I really believe that  so many of these lonely folks have what I call an ‘orphaned heart’.  I don’t mean they don’t have parents, but life has caused them to think and act like orphans.

The legal definition of ‘orphan’ is someone bereft through death or disappearance or abandonment, desertion, separation,  or loss of both parents. You may still have both of your parents, yet you feel abandonment or separation which makes you suspicious of people and relationships.

A person with an orphaned heart gets up everyday feeling they don’t belong and are not accepted. An orphaned heart will cause you to control the relationships that you can, and reject the relationships that you can’t control. Orphan-hearted people put unrealisitic expectations on every relationship. They marry people and expect that person to be perfect and fulfill every need, and then feel disappointed when that doesn’t happen. An orphaned heart will blow a relationship over unmet expectations, then justify their actions because they are hurt. No wonder people are isolated and lonely. No one could ever live up to those standards.

Because orphan-hearted people feel they have to perform to be accepted, they put that same performance expectation on every relationship. You can spend an entire lifetime looking for a place where you are accepted and celebrated, but not offering the same to others.

I have found that place of love and acceptance in the heart of my heavenly Father. The bible says I am ‘accepted in the beloved’. It has taken awhile but I have learned how to rest in His love for me. Instead of looking for people’s acceptance, I am receiving God’s approval. It has helped me not to be so isolated. My expectation is in God and not in people. It frees me to really love people and to trust them more.

Friend, God didn’t create you to live in a world all alone, with your nose pressed up against the window watching everyone else at the party…and you left outside looking in and blaming everybody at the party for your being left out. God said in the book of Genesis that ‘it is not good for man to be alone’. Listen to the voice of God. Go to Him and He will begin to heal your woundedness. He loves you more than you’ll ever know.

 

Round and Round We Go

A man once said, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. That’s so true. It seems funny that we have ever-changing technology and increasing capacity to communicate and connect with people all over they world, yet we so relationally challenged. I’ve come to find out that we live in a world that really doesn’t know how to be married, have a friend, or do anything that requires getting along.

We seem to deal with so much tragedy and drama. We don’t love or trust because it seems so many of us have been wounded. We deal with abandonment, betrayal, and abuse, so we pull into this little cocoon with the idea that ‘I touch no one, and no one touches me’. From the perceived place of safety we let people only so close, until the inevitable happens- they don’t live up to our expectations. So we push them away, and say, ‘Well, that’s what I expected to happen’. We remain isolated from the real life that God has given, using up our time but failing to really live. Then, should we ever decided to peek our head out of our cocoon, the cycle begins again…round and round we go.

Hurt, disappointments and betrayals…they are a part of living in this fallen world. But they are only a part of life, and not the whole thing. Jesus said that He came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10); however, we go through our lives living in this controlled environment, trying to keep our lives emotionally manageable while protecting ourselves.

There’s a generation waiting to receive the love you didn’t get. Trust and love people, and they will hurt you and disappoint you – but trust and love them anyway. God put me on a planet full of people who need Him, and they need you to be the expression of Him. We will never be without hurt, but we must love anyway.

I refuse to live in a world so small that there’s only room for me. So yes, I get hurt. People disappoint me and desert me, but I’m going to let God love through me because people are worth it.