I planned to write an essay about loneliness.
It was going to be brilliant, of course. I had just gotten my first glimpse of real adult life as I waded alone through my freshman year of college, though I was constantly surrounded by people. I had all these aspirations of making friends that didn’t come true. I wanted someone to talk with while I ate my dry bagel before class; I wanted someone to walk all the grocery store aisles with as I searched for quinoa; I wanted someone to commiserate with in the dark empty library while I finished homework and the snow fell outside. But not just any someone–I wanted someone who thought my stupid jokes were funny, who was okay with sitting in silence, who would listen–just listen–to the deep struggles of my heart and cry and pray with me. I am very lucky to know several people like that, but they aren’t at college with me. I feel a deep pain in my chest when I think of them.
As I started working on that essay about loneliness, it wasn’t working. I knew what I wanted to say–my brain sprang ahead of the words and I planned to make some observations about how my generation glorifies self-love and being there for yourself to try to mask the pain, to try to feel fulfilled. Miley Cyrus’ hit song Flowers had recently come out, and I wondered if she had thought about how ridiculous it looks to hold your own hand, and how impractical it was. Who could catch you when you tripped? It’d be like the time my sister ran down our hill with her hands in her pockets and fell and scraped all the skin off the lower half of her face.
As I rushed to find an answer to the problem of loneliness so I could tie off the essay with a neat bow, my dad pushed back. Just leave it, he said. Acknowledge the struggle, present a couple suggestions, but you don’t have to come up with a solution to everything.
I’m young and I have high hopes. I’m the bright college kid that real grownups roll their eyes at because I think everything I write is a sparkling new revelation to society, and sometimes I get carried away by my ideas. Like with that essay–I eventually realized that explaining one of life’s biggest difficulties was too big a task for fifteen hundred words, at least for someone with my level of sagacity, so I let it fade to the back of my google drive and focused on homework instead. Then it was summer, and I took a break from writing.
An outsider would have every reason to say this summer was one of the best of my life. I had a new level of independence, and could easily drive into the Hills to hike or spend the morning at the lake. I hadn’t talked to my high school friends in almost nine months, so conversation with them was easy and interesting, and I got to see my best friend who lives on the other side of the country twice. Twice! My job was good, and it didn’t take long to acclimate to living at home again. I love my family a lot, and I got to spend time with them. But it was a hard summer for me–not because of what was going on outside of me, but because of the state of my heart.
For example, I decided one day that I wanted to go to the pool. However, I have a separate problem where I don’t like to go to pools by myself, because there might be other people there. I asked my brother if he would like to accompany me, but he wasn’t sure. After a couple hours of pestering him, I told him in as offensive a way as I could that I guessed I would just assume he didn’t want to go to the pool. He humbly replied that he didn’t think I was getting along with him that day, so he didn’t think it would be very fun for either of us. I slammed my phone on the table and ran to my room and cried like a five-year-old, because he was right. Why would anyone want to hang out with me when I was angry at them? Later, he came down and apologized, which made me feel even worse. He had done nothing wrong, yet he was the one asking for forgiveness. How could I be so sinful? Why hadn’t God changed me yet?
I was discouraged because that wasn’t the first pool incident. Because I kept getting angry, over and over again. Because college is supposed to be the best time of your life and I should want to go back. Because hard times are supposed to end quickly, and even though I had a difficult year at school it was supposed to end when I came home on break, and because it didn’t end then, it will just keep going and going forever. Because I gave my life to Christ sixteen years ago and I feel more sinful now than I ever have before and doesn’t sanctification mean I’m supposed to feel less sinful?
I concluded that something was majorly wrong with me and tried to fix it. Was I too focused on myself? Let me read a book about fearing God. Was I on my phone too much? Let me cut back my screen time. Was I not serving others enough? Let me teach Sunday School and volunteer to play the piano at church. Some days I felt better. But most of the time, I didn’t. All these things are good things to do, but they weren’t what I needed.
One day, as I was cleaning a friend’s house and listening to music, a song came on that my dad had sent to me when I’d been working on that loneliness essay. It was by one of his favorite artists, Andrew Peterson. As I listened to the words, they struck me:
I’m dying to live but I’m learning to wait . . .
I just want to be new again . . .
I just want to be closer to You again . . .
Lord, I can’t find the song
I’m so tired and I’m always so wrong
Help me be brave tonight
Jesus, please help me out of this cave tonight.
Peace, be still.
I started crying right there in the middle of the empty hall, mop in hand, because this was exactly what I felt but something I’d never realized before. I know that I’m sinful, I am disgusted with myself, and I want so badly to perfectly please the Lord. But four words from Peterson made me realize I want God to change me just like I wanted to go to the pool–it had to happen right now, on my time, or it never would. And Peterson whispered in my ear, “I’m learning to wait.”
All I can do is wait on the Lord to change me, to give me hope, to draw me back to him.
I don’t present this as a new idea–I obviously got it from Peterson, but I also know that many people have come to this conclusion without my or Peterson’s help. And I don’t write this essay as an attempt to neaten up life and answer hard questions. Instead, I present it as something that I’ve recently learned and has given me encouragement in a difficult period of life.
Sometimes hardships hang around for a long time. Months, or years, or decades. I see how I fail, I desire to change, but I can’t do it myself. But when I’m in a hard place for a long time, that doesn’t necessarily mean something’s wrong, it doesn’t mean I have to fix something. It means I have to trust someone–that someone being God. And I can be confident that God will save me because my salvation is not based on my own performance. It’s based on Christ’s work on the cross.
That feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I am, for all general purposes, disgusted with myself. I don’t want to feel this way, I want to stop. But I’m not capable of sanctifying myself–otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have needed to live as a human, die on the cross, and rise from the grave.
See, my discouragement is all based on a distorted version of reality. I did make friends at college, they just weren’t the kind of friends I’d imagined. I am being sanctified, just not how I’d planned. I’m discouraged because I clung so badly to my own ideas and I have trouble not clinging to them. I want to see clearly but I can’t.
All I can do is pray that the Lord will change me, and wait for him to do so in the time that is right. Sometimes it feels like I’ll never get through it, that I’ll never find joy, that I’ll never change. But God is faithful, he will bring me through this.
I’m dying to live but I’m learning to wait.
Wait on the Lord.
Featured image courtesy of the author.
Ellen Sheehy 