I’ve been thinking a lot recently about loneliness and in it I have also been discovering a loveliness that exists. It’s not the loveliness of a girl in a summer dress twirling through an open meadow blooming with wildflowers. Which is honestly usually what I think of when I think of the word “lovely.”
This lovely is deeper. It can be found anywhere, but in order to see it, I’ve had to experience loneliness in ways that I haven’t before. There is a loneliness that I’ve experienced here that comes from the reality of life at home going on without me, the belief that I do not measure up to be doing this kind of work, the struggles of language and cultural barriers, and the loss of what I had accepted as ‘normal’.
This is a loneliness that is tethered to self-doubt, homesickness, culture shock, exhaustion, yes. But it is also a loneliness holding the hand of a humbling savior who is emptying me of all that I have subconsciously believed to be my security outside of him: my family, my friends, my plans, my abilities. It is in recognizing this emptiness that I can finally see the lovely.
This is where in the middle of my loneliness pity party, I look up and hear the voice of my savior who is the only one beside me. The only one who sees to the depths of me. My Jesus who lets me vent and still wants to hear my thoughts and burdens and broken heartedness even after I complain for far too long. My comforter who is the one laying with me as I cry tears that make no sense to my worn-out mind. He helps me look up and see the beauty that is here if I choose to see it.
Perspective changes everything. and the thoughts I allow to rule my mind are what separate hope from despair. Because when I see my savior there in the dark, I can finally focus on the light. It is the lovely of His grace that brings the light of joy and truth to my heart and my eyes.
In believing his grace for me, his truth of hope, and his promise of life, I can see the sweetness of the teens in their questions, the hunger for love in the little kids hanging on me, the wildflowers in the middle of a dusty city road, the small beginnings of deeper friendships. I can see the hope and the need and the love that is here now. When I am filled with the fullness of the Spirit of my Savior, I can enter into this loveliness with the renewed perspective I found in my loneliness.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8
Jesus, where you plant us, make us bloom. We seek you, our one and only source of love in a lonely and confused world.