Originally written August 3, 2010. Because it is appropriate for today, and because I don't feel like writing anything new.
I am writing because, at the moment, the page is the only Jonathan I have. Perhaps the page is listening to me, but I will have to imagine its response, the response that drives away my loneliness and gives me the courage I need to press on. For the page does not have a voice to encourage nor arms to hold nor a countenance to sympathize. It only has (maybe) the ears to listen, depending on if you are good at pretending. I know I should not be selfish, and I have learned that self-pity is really only pride draped in the guise of brokenness. I did not think I was a very prideful person until I learned that. Now I realize that I must be--or must have been, rather, and what I sometimes still live in even though it is not who I am anymore--one of the most prideful people of all. Very few people know how broken I am, really only one whose name is Jesus and He loves me. But once someone glimpsed that I was broken and they left and now I am afraid that if everyone knew I was broken I would be alone. Not really alone because God is always with me and He is my very best friend, but alone as in I would have no Jonathans or Mordecais (like now), and after all God did say it is not good for man to be alone. I am not a man, but I was taken out of man, so I expect it is a similar thing. But I have been in this hole of spiritual isolation for nearly a year off and on, and I told myself once, or maybe the truth whispered to me the way it sometimes does, that if I truly believe that God will provide for all my needs (yes) then He will not leave me in my isolation when He knows I need to get out of it. I need to get out, I have been screaming. And sometimes I get very, very close and I think praise God, this must be what I was waiting for, but if I am being honest, which I am (I always try to be because truth is one of my favorite things, even more than chocolate), I would have to tell you that I am still waiting. I hurt sometimes, waiting. I think God is teaching me to trust Him, and He has been teaching me for a long time because I am not very good at it. And I am feeling better already, so I will probably end this note soon. I think it is because I am like David, during those times when he did not have Jonathan and wrote those Psalms that are terribly depressing at first, but if you can push past that, you will see that by the end of it David is saying things like Praise the Lord and God is good, which might not make sense to everyone, but it makes sense to me. That is why I liked this quote I found, which says, "Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you in the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you. Now this man's treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul?' he asks. His soul has been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: 'Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.'" Of course these thoughts do not come from nowhere; they are lies from Satan, and I can be awfully gullible and have listened to his lies for a long time. That is why I think truth is so precious and why I love it so much, only that is another story that I do not have time to tell now. So I am staring at the page and will draw the rambling to a close because I have nothing left to say and God has quieted my spirit. Praise the Lord.
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