Tangible Loneliness – A Call to Examine Your Theology?
Tim told of a time when he had been speaking to a large crowd. They had clapped their hands and cheered him as a great and entertaining speaker. But when the auditorium was empty, Tim walked out alone and drove back to his hotel room, where he had intentionally left the lights on so the room would not seem so dark and lonely when he returned.
The light didn’t help.
The pain he had been able to put out of his mind for a short time while he was speaking to the group came back with a vengeance. He tried to sleep but could not because of the pain, yet he was too tired and emotionally drained to do much else. Exhausted, Tim closed his eyes and hoped and prayed morning would come quickly. It didn’t. Tim tried to write.
Just then, at one of his weakest moments, Tim Hansel wrote in his journal words that God used to begin prying open the ever-thickening shell I was building around my heart. Tim wrote, “The loneliness was so bad tonight that it sucked all the oxygen out of the room. It was so intense it felt like it could peel the paint off the walls.”
Whoooom! Tim’s words exactly described what I had been feeling since coming to prison. I was amazed that another person had put into words my exact emotions.
Tim continued, “Lately I have experienced a loneliness so deep that I feel as though I need a second heart to contain all the pain.”
Yes! I wanted to shout. That’s how I have been feeling. My heart had been so badly bruised over the past three years, I had pulled into myself and I did not want to be hurt anymore.
I read Tim’s book. And reread it. I underlined things that spoke to my heart and mind. And then I read it again. Tim wrote:
Loneliness does not always come from emptiness. Sometimes it is because we are too full …full of ourselves. Full of activity. Full of distractions. Paradoxically, if I want to heal the loneliness in my life, I’ve got to get away …to be alone with God.
Tim suggested that part of the reason God allows us to walk through the valleys in ourlives is so we will learn to depend on Him in new ways.
But I can’t even hear God’s voice anymore! I talked back to the pages. I feel like God has abandoned me.
No, Tim wrote, “Loneliness is not a time of abandonment …it just feels that way. It’s actually a time of encounter at new levels with the only One who can fill that empty place in our hearts.”
I had been reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s books about the same time as I had received Tim’s. I had even written in the front of my Bible one of the statements the brilliant Russian writer had penned while in prison: “When you have robbed a man of everything, he is no longer in your power. He is free again.” I felt like I had lost everything, but I in no way felt free …yet.
Through the combined impact of Hansel’s and Solzhenitsyn’s books, I caught the first dim glimpse of what God might be doing in my life. Tim drove home the message:
Perhaps one of the main reasons we fall into loneliness and despair is that we are so preoccupied with ourselves, so invested in our own egos. We’re so concerned with how we are doing that we can’t seem to get a clear focus on what God is doing in us and around us.
Could it be? I wondered. Could it possibly be true that I was in prison by the very design of God? Was there really a larger purpose behind my imprisonment, as some of my friends had implied?
I didn’t know where God was, but I was not about to attribute my loneliness to God’s plan for my life. That thought did not fit into my theology very well, so I tossed it aside.*
*Question for further reflection: If your life presented circumstances that flowed contrary to your theology (how you understand God), could you or would you seek a deeper understanding of God’s ways? God does not change, but our understanding of Him should as we mature in the faith.
