In the Lonely Hour
In the Lonely Hour... The lonely hour can be those hours at night when the silence is boisterous; yet not loud enough to combat the raging war inside of your mind. It is when your phone is as dry as the Sahara; when the optimistic thoughts of future hope has been left to chill while you lay alone...waiting for your covering. The lonely hour. It could be limited to a mere sixty minutes in your day. It could also be a period of days, weeks, months, or even years. But just as you are a single individual reading this blog, you have at some point experienced the lonely hour. If you haven't, you will. It happens to the best of us. The lonely hour invites vulnerability. It welcomes the most foolish decisions if we aren't careful. It solicits the past to become the present again, and it can tarnish a beautifully painted picture of the future. Simply put: the lonely hour ain't no joke! Whether you are lonely because you're missing your Bae, feeling neglected or overlooked...or if you don't have a Bae and are wishing for one; being lonely can yield unwanted results. 1. Settling---Loneliness will cause you to settle for far less than God's best. It will have you responding to all the random Facebook messages of "hey sexy" or "you fine AF"...Who really has time for that? But after so long of feeling like no one really gives two craps about you, who could really judge you for settling for what you can get, right? 2. Re-visiting the past---being lonely almost always can cause an unnecessary trip into the past to that old relationship that we barely escaped with our sanity, dignity, and self-esteem. It's like the lonely gods sends out memos to every bad situation you have ever escaped and says, "hey you can get her back right about NOW!" And before you know it, the I miss you texts start rolling in. Before you know it, What was wrong the first second and third time around is beginning to feel right all because you're lonely.
As a dog goes back to its vomit, so a fool repeats his stupidity. -Proverbs 26:11
Loneliness is one of those things that people never want to be. It's not something that people admit to being often, but it's taking us singles straight outta here! So what do we do? We have to learn how to be alone without becoming lonely. I don't have the steps to learning how to do that. What I do know, however, is that the greatest overcomer of all times is living within us. He guides us, listens to us, talks to us and understands us. And even if no one else is talking to us or acknowledging us, God is aware of our every need. He is with us in every single moment and if we will learn to appreciate that fact, we can begin to defeat the lonely demons that set out to ruin our mind and hearts.
Prayer: God, in our lonely moments give us a mind to seek you. We know that we often stray away from you, but we are grateful that you never stray away from us. You are consistent. You never change. You know our thoughts, our feelings, our concerns; so help us to navigate through these difficult moments. Give us the courage to keep waiting on what you have promised. Amen.