I can tell you that for a time I HATED going to church. Knowing me now, you'd think that was kinda crazy, because I love going, I need to go, and it makes me happy to go to church....more than I can really express to you. I am always so happy on the way and once we get there I am so excited to be filled up with knowledge..I love taking notes, and I love learning...it just restores my soul in so many ways. I love going...but, there was a time that I allowed my sinful nature to take over and the devil ruined church for me. Want to know why? I hated seeing happy couples, I hated seeing the man in front of me wrap his arms around his wife when we sang...or watching these happy couples...with their happy children all sitting together...I would completely sit the sermon aside and think about how these happy couples would take their happy-selves to lunch happily together after church...then they would go happily to their happy homes and be a happy family....blah...it was too much for me. I stopped listening and getting what I needed from church. I was really really lonely.
I always hated when I had to make big decisions in life...I envied hearing women say, “let me talk to my husband...” (heard often at an auto-repair type shop) I hated that. I hated that I did not have someone to bounce ideas off of, or to talk things out with. I just wanted someone to solve life's little problems with.
Lonely created a fog. I know that everyone experiences, and handles loneliness in different ways...My loneliness created a fog. I often felt like a robot just going through the motions of life, and Rob had told me in the past he felt the same way. I think loneliness hits us harder at different times of day as well. I was always ok first thing in the morning, and typically when I was working and at work I was better..I had a distraction, and I had friends I worked with that kept me away from my loneliness....but, gosh, once I got home and got Aiden tucked safely into his bed I would turn around and hit the wall of loneliness again. It was a hard brick wall that never really budged! It was there again, Mr. Lonely. I learned to put myself to bed right when I got Aiden tucked in most of the time. I cut out those terrible lonely hours in my life, and just slept until the next morning.
Rob told me once that he would immerse himself in TV, wood-working, and computer games to silence his lonely.
I look back on my lonely days often now, because they brought me right here, where God knew I would end up. But, I had to experience the lonely to be grateful for the unlonely. I do love that Mr. Lonely taught me to love very deeply, and unconditionally. I love much better now having been so desolate. I never want to be without my family I have now, and I would endure the lonely again if it brought me right where I am now. Lonely also taught me faith. I have always had faith, and I have had beliefs of course..but lonely REALLY taught me to be steady in my faith...and that without fail God will deliver. I was so diligent in prayer over my loneliness....now, when I was sitting in church scowling at the happy people ahead of me...I wasn't so diligent, but when I discovered that my problem was loneliness I became tireless in my prayer. I talked to God many many nights about how it hurt, about how I just wanted to experience love and a family...and what did he do? Exactly what Psalm 37:4 says he will do... “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Lonely made me grateful. Lonely made me aware. Lonely taught me to love better. Lonely taught me faith.