Brerah

Lonely with Everyone Around

I work with people every day. I have a roomate. I have lots of friends. I am part of a church where there are lots of great people who I am growing to love. I have community. I am lonely.

I decided to write about this after reading a story from a friend about the same subject, and after listening to Habig talk all the time about the biggest problem among the students at Vanderbilt being loneliness. I gave the idea a head nod, and thought myself to be excused from struggling with this. 'It's something they(finger pointed at students) struggle with.' But I was hit with this sometime this week. I am lonely too.

It's not a sit-around-and-twiddle-my-thumbs-kind-of-lonely. Its more subtle. Sin works like that, its usually the real subtle sins that work through your being for a very long time that end up flipping your world upside down. That is how it happens for me at least. Any of you who know me at all, know that I struggle with an idolatry of the idea of marriage. It's not marriage itself, because, well, I have never been married, so that is why I say 'the idea of marriage.' You see, what I think is that one day, Lord willing, I will be married to somebody. And when that day comes, I will be happy, for many reasons, but mainly because I won't be 'lonely' anymore. She will be there to hang out with at nights in the house, I won't have to call people if I want company to dinner, or whatever. And the scary thing is, is that all of these things are true. She WILL be there to watch TV, she WILL go to dinner with me, etc etc. Marriage is a good thing, and there are many many benefits to being married, and that's precisely why for me, this sin is subtle and deceptive.

I don't believe that I am validated and valued in Christ. I don't. I don't believe that Christ is enough. I want to, but today, and many days, I don't. My official theology says that I believe this, but my day to day 'unofficial' theology says otherwise. If I did believe it, why am I so lonely? Why do I think that a girl will validate me, when the Bible says that anything that we look to for life other than Christ is a broken cistern. I look everywhere for someone to validate me, I look everywhere but to Christ.

God loves. In fact, God loves the whole world. And seeing as how God has called me into relationship with him, he loves me in a special way. He loves me in spite of my crap, and not only does he love me, he wants to marry me. I don't know if I would marry me knowing all that I know, but He has seen it all, and wants to marry me anyway. Somehow I think this marriage is better than the one I long for. Would that I believe that the Lord has honeymoon affections for me forever. I need faith to believe that, because that sounds pretty good.

posted by corbs @ 10:48 PM