Something that has been very heavy on my heart recently has been the battle with loneliness. This is because I have been in a spot of loneliness myself, and all at the same time I have been hearing about the loneliness that others I love deeply are feeling. It got me thinking: loneliness is something whispered to us by satan. Feelings aren’t tangible but there is something about loneliness that makes it appear to be. The enemy has you look around and see places where you don’t fit in or where you actually don’t feel lonely-or shouldn’t- but all of the sudden you do.
In processing my own loneliness, I have learned that a lot of my places of struggle come from a place of deeply rooted comparison. Maybe you feel this way too. Here While talking to the Lord about this place of struggle, He gave me this vision I want to share with you, in hopes you can learn from it, too.
Each and every one of us has a special closet full of these thick wool sweaters, and when we compare ourselves to others we open the door to let satan in. We let him whisper lies and negativity into our lives and this space. We allow him into the vulnerable places, that at times is even hard to let the Lord into. We lead him through our closet full of our doubts, insecurities, mistakes, and places where we lack love. He walks into this place checking out all of these new outfits that he can’t wait to try on. We let him walk into the darkest, most broken part of our mind and heart. He doesn’t treat these sweaters with kindness – instead he tugs, pokes, and tears pieces of these insecurities. He puts on his new found sweaters, finding that they fit him nicely and walks into these deep, dark cold places. He walks as far into these cold places as he can. He puts on the sweater of doubts and walks us deeper and deeper into these doubts until the sweater is worn thin and we have reached a deep pain that we never have before. Rather than returning the sweater, he leaves it where it is and finds a new one to walk into the cold with. Satan, unlike our heavenly father, desires only horrible things for us. He desires so deeply to drag us away from our relationship with the Lord.
This closet isn’t just available to satan. It’s also available to the Lord. When we open up this closet to the Lord, beautiful things happen. First, the Lord asks us to walk into this space with Him. He asks us to walk into these places of darkness holding His hand. He asks us to pick out a sweater at a time -comparison, loneliness, the feeling of being unloved – and asks us questions about why we even bought the thing in the first place. He asks hard questions that make you think about choices you’ve made, about places He wants you to change. It’s not always easy, because like our clothes in real life, we can have deep attachments to our sweaters. It isn’t easy talking to the Lord about these places of darkness and it sure as heck is not easy to watch Him pull sweater after sweater, but He is gentle in the purging process. The hard things are that our closets will always gather new sweaters, and that sucks. But the wonderful thing is: the Lord folds our sweaters and promises us that we won’t need them because the place we are going with Him is warm, comforting and light. And if that isn’t a sweet promise in a place of pain, I don’t know what is.
