in the middle of nowhere

Isolation is something I became very familiar with during my three years of law school.  It was so suffocating at times, I took to eating many of my dinners in front of my laptop with a TV show playing, just so I could hear the sound of someone else's voice fill up the tiny studios that I inhabited.  I went home to see my family as often as I could because I couldn't stand not having anything to do in a given weekend other than study on my own.  I dreaded going to church for two years because I felt completely unseen by the other congregants, and even the few Christian friends I did have in law school felt foreign at times because I didn't feel like we really knew each other.  In my rather infrequent journal entries, I wrote things like: "God, I am so alone and so lonely and I feel like I am stepping away from You and letting the enemy convinece me and make sense to me, but I want to fight it. I want to be protected by You and I want to be called Yours and I want to never leave Your presence."  But generally, when I reflect back on this time, I can genuinely say that it was a season of greater intimacy with and dependence on the Lord, and that as a result of my forced isolation, I grew up from my GCC herd mentality and claimed my faith as my own.  And yet sometimes when I reflect back on this time, I am filled with so much pain and anxiety that I cannot imagine going through it ever again.

But here I am. 

While I was waiting for service to begin this past Sunday, I read Psalms 142 and 143.  As I spoke the words aloud in my head, I almost began sobbing right then and there because I could have written these words myself:

Psalm 142:4
Look to the right and see: there is none who takes notice of me; no refuge remains to me; no one cares for my soul. 

Psalm 143:3-4, 6-7
For the enemy has pursued my soul; he has crushed my life to the ground; he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead. Therefore my spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled.
I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Answer me quickly, O Lord! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit. 

Psalm 143:8 has been a favorite of mine-- "Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul."-- but on Sunday, I was not as moved as I have been in the past by this verse because I was not seeking love or wisdom, just His presence. Just the sound of His voice.  Just His nearness-- to know that, even if it feels like I have no one who really sees me or understands me, I have the One who knows me the best and sees what is ahead for me and promises that it is good.  I have been struggling (now, for months) to know and feel that, and in many ways, I have felt forgotten, overlooked, abandoned, even temporarily disowned at times, by the One who says He will never leave me nor forsake me, the One who says He cannot give me up no matter how far I run away because He does not love the way that man does.  I read Psalms 142 and 143 and found my heart weeping because I don't know how to make Him come back (even though others will tell me that He has never once left my side). 

And as I wander in this void where either He is not here or I have been made blind and deaf, I find myself thinking back to my time in law school and pleading with the Lord not to let me enter this season of utter loneliness.  I don't want to be alone.  I don't want to be cast off.  I don't want to feel like the enemy is constantly "pursuing my soul" and tempting me to give up my daughtership to go sit in darkness.  I don't want to feel jealousy at other people's intimacy with the Lord.  I don't want to feel like a fake while pointing others to the riches of knowing Christ and being known by Christ.  I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to.

Why, Lord? 

Lord, answer me quickly! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit.