I believe we can find some truths about loss, and healing to take with us for help and encouragement on our journey. My hope and prayer in writing this series...
Our first stop on that quest brings us to the letter L for
L oneliness and Longing
“You don’t have any friends, nobody likes you!”
That’s the character Gollum speaking to the Smeagol part of himself. For those familiar with the movie scene, Gollum is trying to talk himself out of helping his new hobbit friends.1 He’s using words we like to tell ourselves in the midst of feelings of loneliness and longing. Feelings that tend to surround us in the midst of loss.
Each experience of grief and loss is unique. There is an “invisible blanket” between the world and the person experiencing loss.2 The absence - of the person as we remember them, the relationship as it once was - like a thick fog, spreads over everything, and leads to so much doubt and uncertainty.
When presence and absence hold hands, I find myself on the outside looking in. Suffering and loss seem to mark us as “other.” We’re lonely in a crowd, because loss changes us. It changes our headspace and how we see the world.3
There’s something about relationship loss that tends to be viewed as not being such a big deal. I read somewhere recently that, “Watching people you used to love become total strangers is one of the darkest weirdest things ever,”4 and I agree. You’re suffering through loss but the person is still present. Faith in the midst of that ambiguous loss, specifically the loss of people that are still alive, can be especially challenging, and leave us feeling extremely lonely and with a longing that defies words.
Gollum’s you don’t have any friends narrative that we’re so quick to identify with is no match for capital P Presence, though. Jesus, also known as Emmanuel, which literally means God with us. God with me - Jesus - sits with me in the dark, and shines a light of Truth that breaks through the fog of ambiguous loss. The light of Truth from his word reminds me who he is, what he’s done for me, and who I am in him, providing comfort and presence in my time of loneliness and longing.
Despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and pain and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we did not appreciate his worth or esteem him.
Isaiah 53:3 (AMP)
Jesus’ experience of loss informs my loneliness and longing in the midst of loss. It reminds me of his steadfast presence with me in the midst of it, too.
I am with you always [remaining with you perpetually—regardless of circumstance, and on every occasion], even to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:20 (AMP)
Loneliness and longing are present in the midst of God’s presence.
This is faith, too.
Until next time,
Becky
I first read the “invisible blanket” reference in A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. It perfectly captures that “outside looking in” feeling that tends to accompany loss.
A paraphrasing of words found on the pages of Companions in Suffering by Wendy Alsup. This book has been another incredibly helpful resource on my ambiguous loss journey.
Here’s where I first read these words. The fact that I got to see them in this particular way made it especially memorable.
Beautiful, Becky.🙏🏻💗