The Echoes of Loneliness and Prayers

As a little girl growing up in rolling Wisconsin farmland I remember playing outside after supper in the summertime. Just before sunset the air would cool and freshen and my brother or my cousins and I would start yelling "Hello! Hello!" to hear our voices echo off the hills. During the school year we sang a song in school about echoes. Just a silly thing about "Little Sir Echo..." but the last line of the song and the last echo on the hills at sunset carried the same message---"but you're always so far away...away." Now that I think of it again, it was a song about loneliness...It was a sad song covering a wound with the innocence of childhood.

Loneliness and finances vie for the #1 spot on the list of problems widows face. Here's a short, honest prayer about loneliness, very much like many of the psalms. See if it captures any of your thoughts and use it frequently. God is never tired of hearing from you.

Dear Heavenly Father,

There are days when I feel suffocated and overwhelmed by loneliness. It's like a heavy, dark blanket pressed to the face and I'm powerless to pull it away. It drains my strength and hope; its like arthritis of the soul---it just won't go away. How can I live like this? How can I go on when my soulmate--the one person I can't live without, the one who was a part of me, who completed my sentences, who filled my thoughts, pleasured my existence, and gave purpose to my days? How can I go on when he's gone?

Life has blown up and been scattered to the wind. I am a solitary speck in a lonely wasteland, a wandering soul in a dry, empty desert   . . . 

I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins.

I lie awake;

I have become like a bird alone on a roof.

Psalm 102:6,7

. . . Amen.

Have you been in such a lonely place? Like a bird on the rooftop, watching life pass you by? Prayers and verses like the ones above are labelled as "laments," by theologians. They provide no answer, they only express the honest cry of the heart.

 

What?!! No answer? No three-point sermon or 12-step plan?

 

Nope. A lament is just a simple, honest heart cry.

 

God's OK with honesty, with laments. He wants us to bring Him the loneliness and pain we feel. He understands and accepts us; if we've confessed our sins He hears our prayers even though we wonder about that at times.

 

If you're lonely today, tell the Lord about it. If you're not, then please pray for widows and many other people who experience this echoing silence moment by moment. ♥ ferree