I have enjoyed exploring the first truth in this Truth That Makes Life Beautiful series: You are loved.
I am so excited to be moving into the next truth that makes life beautiful: You are not alone. This truth is close to my heart, because I felt alone, and truly believed I was alone, for many years.
As I said in the introduction to this series We say what we think. We live what we believe. And I believed that I was alone. It was a belief born out of a lie that formed a chain around my heart, link by link, over the years.
I had a great childhood, surrounded by family and friends who loved me.
But I also had a belief deep down in the core of my being that I was alone. And there were situations, circumstances, that seemed to prove the truth of that belief. We live in a broken world, surrounded by broken people, and in my own broken state, I misinterpreted many things.
I wore my aloneness as an accessory. I picture it as a pearl necklace. (Y’all know we wear pearls with anything here in the south.) And each time something happened that seemed to prove the truth of my false belief, I added one more pearl to the strand.
I wasn’t aware of this strand of pearls until a few years ago when I noticed that I was reacting really strongly to situations. I was reacting as if I was abandoned. One night my husband looked at me and said, “You know I’m for you, right?” I didn’t know that. Why would I not know that?
So I went back to the beginning and looked at events that happened over the years: growing up, those crazy turbulent teen years, the early years in our marriage, and I named each pearl in my necklace. Those pearls added up to one thing. I was alone. I was alone and there was no one to protect me.
I believed the lie that because I felt alone, I must be alone, abandoned, worthless.
I began looking for truth to replace this lie. And as I searched God’s Word, I traded in that string of pearls for a pearl of great price: what God says about me (and you) in His Word.
God says we are not alone. He says it over and over in His Word. And He shows it in many different ways in our lives.
We are not alone. And that truth makes life beautiful.