Nothing Makes Us So Lonely As Our Secrets

The past few weeks have been very hard. I've been carrying some pretty heavy stuff, and, as the title of this entry (which is a quote from a guy named Paul Tournier) says, that stuff that we carry in secret really does make us lonely. Today I am home alone cleaning my house in preparation for my family's visit next weekend. Alone-ness feeds loneliness as well. Obviously, this could have been a set up for a really bad day. But God had other plans.

Last week a special friend gave me an early Christmas present-a DVD with winter scenes set to Christmas music. I love gifts like that. She thought enough about me to know that my heart was needing a little bit of home. Our schedule has been so crazy that I have not had a chance to watch it until this morning, so I put it in while I was folding clothes. It was like the Lord just wrapped His arms around me and reminded me that he is my Daddy. In those pictures of cold, lonely places all covered in white, He reminded me that there is immeasurable beauty and living water flowing freely in his presence. All the time.

For the first time in a while I was able to crawl into His lap and just cry everything out. I could tell Him how I felt, where I've failed and what I need. Really need. All of the things that there are no words for, no ways to communicate so that people will understand, the things that are so deep inside that I don't understand them myself-they all came out of my heart to His. As He says in Romans 8:26-27, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." I am so thankful that my Daddy knows my heart so much better than I do, and that His Spirit prays for me and through me when I just can't do it myself. And, in this moment, I find myself much less alone.