On October 12th I posted a blog about how spending time with my girlfriends from Virginia Beach made me realize how lonely I am. I asked for you to leave some comments about your struggles with loneliness in ministry. I was overwhelmed; I've never received so many comments! My heart breaks for those of us who are lonely, depressed and aren't quite sure how to create deep relationships with other women.
I was reading through one of Vince's old sermons on the movie, "The Matrix." Read the following excerpt. I hope it ministers to you deeply.
"One of the most pervasive and horrible feelings inside of us is that of loneliness. Henri Nouwen, who used to teach at Yale University, writes this, 'Loneliness is one of the most universal sources of human suffering today. The roots of loneliness are very deep and cannot be touched by optimistic advertisement, substitute love images or social togetherness. They find their food in the suspicion that there is no one who cares and offers love without condition. And no place that one can be vulnerable without being used. The many small rejections of everyday; a sarcastic smile, a flippant remark, a brisk denial or a bitter silence, may all be quite innocent and hardly worth our attention if they didn't constantly arouse our basic human fear of being totally alone, with darkness as our only companion.'
He goes on to say, 'It is this most basic human loneliness that threatens us and is so hard to face. Too often we will do anything possible to avoid the confrontation with the experience of being alone. And sometimes we are able to create the most ingenious devices to prevent ourselves from being reminded of this condition. Our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain. Not only physical pain, but our emotional and mental pain as well. We bury our pains, as if they were not really there. We have become so used to this state of amnesia that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have not project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch, and no record to play, and we are left all alone with ourselves, we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human loneliness and are so afraid of experiencing an all pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game that makes us believe that everything is fine after all.'
There's an author, not a Christian, named Douglas Coupland, and he writes this in one of his books, 'Now here is my secret: I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God -- that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.'"
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