A Journal Entry On Loneliness

As I write my book, I’ve been digging deep into things I wrote many years ago.

One of the threads of the book concerns the loneliness I felt so often in my life.

This Journal entry from September 22, 1998 will be making an appearance in my book:

What a time this is! I can so quickly go from the mountaintop to the valley—I feel as if I’m in the valley now. How do I feel? Utterly, utterly alone. I feel empty and simply desire to be filled. There are others around me, and when I am with them, it brings me temporary joy. It is so easy to slip into some sort of thinking that being with people will simply always bring temporary joy, and that upon me leaving them, I shall fall again into “despair,” instead of being refreshed by my time with them.

But what does this loneliness mean? Is it God calling me to say that He is my only comfort and rest? Or is that a depressed man’s hope for salvation?

FACT: God is my only salvation and only source of joy and the only answer for the aching emptiness of my soul. I don’t like that! And what does that mean? Could I have joy in a world in which my sole companion was Jesus Christ? If the world were merely He and I, would I be happy? In part, my heart has a thrill at the thought, but that is squelched quickly for I find that hard to conceive. And terrifying. Yet I am a needy, needy being! I ache inside tremendously, and I so long to fill that empty void with SOMETHING, so that I may feel joy. I know this: that SOMETHING can only be Jesus Christ—and what staggering reality is this? He will not tolerate anything to compete with Him. He desires to ravish my soul, completely!

That last line makes me think of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,

But am betroth’d unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The only path to peace on this earth, the only salve for the soul, is to be ravished by the Lover of our Soul. No earthly love will ever satisfy or appease us.

I needed the ache of loneliness to realize this.