Do you ever have one of those moments when you think, “No one understands what I’m going through”?
That sentiment isn’t reserved for antsy teenagers or Enneagrams 4s. At some point, each of us walks through something that feels isolating and foreign to others.
Maybe it’s a particular illness (hello, dizziness that fits in no defined categories). Maybe no one understands your take on the world. Or you’re walking through divorce surrounded by couples. Maybe depression threatens to suck you under. It could be a parenting struggle no one else you know has.
The enemy loves it when we believe that no one understands. It keeps our eyes downward. It keeps us isolated.
But this season reminds us that it’s simply not true. We are never alone.
Everything that threatens to isolate us is an invitation instead to sit with Emmanuel. Share on X“Jesus has journeyed to the far reaches of loneliness. In his broken body he has carried your sins and mine, every separation and loss, every heart broken, every wound of the spirit that refuses to close, all the riven experiences of men, women and children across the bands of time.” Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
Emmanuel, God with Us
Jesus is our Emmanuel-God with us. God with us in every sense of the word-not just physically, but in our experiences, our emotions, our humanity. There is nothing we go through where He is not fully engaged, feeling it with us. His willingness to identify with us in His lifetime means there is nothing in our life that He cannot and will not touch.
I know. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough. Just this week, as I contemplated the challenges of launching my book, I thought, “I know God is with me, but I still want ‘Jesus with skin on’ as they say.” Graciously, He gives that to us sometimes as well.
But in the places where we don’t feel it, let’s find comfort in this: He knows. What we’re going through is intimately known by God. We are not alone.
One of my first years out of college, when I was new in full-time ministry and hadn’t a clue what I was doing, it was hard. Jesus met me, alone in my dark little basement room, reminding me of this truth that He knows.
I wrote a lot of poetry back then, some of which I have shared here. This is the poem I wrote during that time:
HARD
My soul longs for one
one who knows my “hard.”
a longing not out of self-pity or doubt
but from an emptiness aching to be filled
with understanding.
Jesus, Lover of my soul
let me to your bosom fly
There to hear your heart
beat in sympathy with mine,
and, “I know, I know your hard”
quenching my inmost being.
As we experience Advent, let this truth reverberate in our hearts: He knows, He knows, He knows. However hard it is, He is closer than a heartbeat. Let that breath life into you this season.
Related posts:
Do You Know What You’re Worth?
Why Christmas Reminds Me to Hope in God
Not Alone Because of Christmas
