Lonely Unique

Loneliness is one of the deep, deep pains of suffering, no matter what form it takes. Each person’s suffering is unique. The experiences may be similar, but yet no one understands. Your heart is different. Your lost one was different. Your dream was different. Your pain is different. The Potter’s hands touched, formed, molded your heart uniquely. Like each snowflake is uniquely perfect and beautiful. Like each gaseous brilliant star is special, upholding a unique role in the balanced pull of space, emitting a special ray of light. You are unique; your suffering is unique.

I often hear, “But it’s not as bad as so-and-so.” Perhaps it’s a superficial comfort, “It could be worse.” Perhaps it is healthy trying to keep it in perspective. But I fear sometimes it is an attempt at a heroic, stalwart minimizing of pain. We are Christians, right? So buck up, show how good God is to the world. Show we are strong in Christ.

Photo by Peter Barr

But maybe minimizing pain is minimizing God’s unique work in our lives. Maybe it is minimizing ourselves, our longings and desires and circumstances. Maybe it is passing over too lightly, too quickly what the Father wants to teach us and the Spirit wants to form in us in that moment. Maybe it is minimizing God’s ability to comfort and supply hope. Hope is only needed when it’s bad. Comfort is only needed when there is pain. Will we have the courage to enter into our pain so that we can feel his comfort? Our Savior’s heart is not so small—he collects all our tears. He is not saying that your pain is not that bad. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure—and what may be nothing for one person may be a deep wound for another. One is not better or worse; we are uniquely designed.

It is in this uniqueness, loneliness, that we find the comforts of our Savior. No one can know your heart, what is unsaid, the depths—but he who formed it can. He can fulfill it in unique ways. He who planted your desires in your heart whispers that word, fanning a spark that had long died. He who fashioned your imagination sends that butterfly, bird, song, moment, picture, smell, that thing that speaks to you. But we often have to be drawn out in that lonely pain to be able to feel his unique, personal touch. We mask in crowd, in busyness. Jesus doesn’t love a crowd; he doesn’t love an activity; he doesn’t love a mask. He loves you, in all your throbbing pain.

It is in this uniqueness, our individual pain of suffering, that we find a calling as well. Pain shaves us into a key, a key fit for a certain lock. A certain person. A certain situation. We who have felt the loneliness can reach out to others. In presence. Honoring their uniqueness. We are called. Just as the delicate balance of the mighty universe, galaxies upon galaxies, is finely tuned so that without one star, tugs and tides and tensions would be different. So you are uniquely shaped to fulfill a unique role, to uniquely bear another’s burdens, to uniquely encourage someone else’s faith, to uniquely allow the comfort of Christ to overflow through you (Gal. 6:2; Rom. 1:12; 2 Cor. 1:3-7).

The same hands that fashioned you from dust,

Now nail-pierced

Carry you to fashion you

Through your own piercing pain

If we will enter, follow. 

Immanuel, God with us, God with you.