I have been sitting with this picture as the background for my computer screen for some time now. I was struck instantly by it but was unsure why. As I look at it I see one bird in the midst of many other birds and yet separated, alone. I often feel like that one bird as I am aware that though I am surrounded by people that care about me, I feel very much alone. Some of that loneliness comes out of a felt sense that flows from the streams running deep within my heart and back into the early years of my life. Though this loneliness is of the past, I find myself perpetuating this feeling in my current day to day life through unconscious and even conscious actions that keep others at a safe distance and isolate myself in my journey. Do I feel like I deserve to be alone? Do I fear that others won't want to be with me if they know who I am? These are some of the questions that I am asking of myself. As I reflect on all of this, I also pause to consider what my earliest experience of loneliness was like.
As I begin to listen to and validate the traumatic responses that still exist in my body today, they paint a sobering picture of my experience of sexual abuse. As an adult, I am challenged to take in the images and sensations that come with this picture. As an adult, I have found it quite difficult to share this picture with even my most trusted friends. I find myself wondering what it might have felt like to be a young child trying to figure out what to do with these very experiences. How do you interpret them? How do you live in them? How do you hold them all by yourself in a time of life when your greatest concern should be who might you play with that day? I see a young child walking through her life with an outward appearance of health and happiness yet on the inside is experiencing a raging, torturous battle that she must face alone. That seems to me to be the very definition of loneliness. Some time ago I was struck by two simple lines in a song. "Does anybody see her? Does anybody hear?" These lines went deep into my soul as I seemed to identify with those questions. I find myself asking that question again today. "How could no one have known?"
As I was sitting with all of this, I found myself asking how can God meet me in this loneliness that seems to run at the very core of my being? Unaware of why, a recent experience came to mind. One afternoon, not that long ago, I was in a particularly painful place. I knew I needed to go into the ministry center that I work at to complete a project so I did. Generally, I am able to mange my struggle in a way that minimizes how it is displayed over my face and body. This day however, I seemed unable to do so. There was not a person in the office that day who was not aware that I was in the midst of a deep and painful struggle. In the very nature of our community, I was not questioned but acknowledged. I was not ignored but seen. I was not pressed but invited. In my willingness to be seen, my experience from others that afternoon was of compassion, awareness and presence in the midst of my pain. It seems that God began to answer my question before I even asked it. I believe that God can and will reformat my brain and the way I experience my story through spaces and experiences such as this. I believe that if I allow Him, He will restore the years the locusts have eaten so that I may know that He is the Lord my God.
