I’d forgotten how isolating suffering can be.

It feels like the worst thing, to be walking about with an invisible weight resting on your chest, so heavy you can hardly breathe, and no one notices.

To feel as if you are screaming and sobbing inside, and no one can hear you.

To feel as if the weight of life is just so heavy that you can hardly take another step, and no one wants to help you.

And smiling hurts. It hurts because it feels so fake, so false, to be pretending you are fine, when you feel as though your life is crumbling in your hands.

So you try. You pick one or two people and stammer out that things have been really difficult for a long time, and now it feels as if no area of your life is really functioning and you don’t know what to do. But because you’re nervous and don’t want to be a burden you laugh and try to make it seem less of a problem than it is, so the real issue isn’t fully expressed.

And because people are busy and overwhelmed themselves they don’t usually take the time to really delve deeper and ask what the problems are, and to imagine what it must feel like. I’ve been there myself, had a conversation with someone, walked away, and only later has it struck me just how difficult their life must be because of some seemingly small thing they shared.

Or sometimes, because people are busy and overwhelmed themselves, a look of cornered panic crosses their face unawares, and you realise that they don’t want another problem to be burdened with, another need to meet, another struggler to carry, they are just keeping their own head above water and that’s enough.

So you feel like no one really understands.

And sometimes, what really, really hurts, is that you get more kindness from someone who doesn’t even know Jesus than those who do, and are supposed to know better.

I’m going to come back and explain why things have been so hard, and why I have’t touched this blog for months now. Right now that task is a bit beyond me … there are so many issues I don’t even know where to begin.

As always I’m looking for something to take away from this experience, even this depression and hurt.

I think sometimes God pulls us aside and takes away every person we are depending on. This feels like unkindness, but it’s not. Because he wants to be everything to us, knowing that only then we will find peace and strength. People will always let us down. They were never designed to carry the full weight of our need, let alone in this broken world where sin so readily destroys. Only God can fill the eternity gaping in our souls, and he longs to do it. So he makes us feel that need by pulling away every false prop.

So if you are feeling alone too, lean into him. Cry the messy kind of sobbing and tell him that you need him. Let him bind up your wounds. You know, sometimes that hurts too. Oil on raw skin stings. But later it soothes and heals.

And then be the person you long to meet in your darkest hour, the one who pulls up a chair and listens, who isn’t afraid to ask the probing questions, the ones that draw out the pain. Yes, even when you are hurting yourself. Offer kindness instead of politeness, love instead of reserve. Sometimes God sends us pain so we learn how to help the many others in this world who are crying out for love, and truly have no one to turn to.