Alone in a full room.

Sometimes I can be in a room full of people and feel so very alone.

A sanctuary. A family dinner. A grocery store on a Saturday. My own kitchen with my husband three feet away. And still... alone.

There are two kinds of alone, mamma. The first one is when no one is in the room. The second one is when the room is full and you are still by yourself. That second one is the one that makes you feel like you are losing your mind. Everyone is right here. Why does it feel like this?

You are not losing your mind. You are not making it up.

A full room can hold a deeply alone woman. I have been her. I am her on some days. And I want to tell you out loud that what you are feeling is real.

Here is why I think it happens.

Some of us are going through a pain that others cannot hold. They cannot comprehend it. Or they cannot bear to walk into the fire with us. And in most ways, that is just the truth.

But I have learned not to be angry at them for it.

Because most people are not cold. They are scared. Our fire is the thing they are most afraid of. If they sat in it with us, they would have to look at what would happen if it came for them. So they hand us a verse, or a casserole, or a quick praying for you across a parking lot, and they back away from the heat. That is not betrayal. That is human. We have all done it to somebody else.

But there is One who does not back away.

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."Matthew 11:28

Read it slow.

He does not say come when you have it together. He does not say come when you have something to offer. He does not say come when your faith is strong again, when you have stopped crying, when you can put on a smile in the lobby.

He says come, all who are weary.

The invitation is specifically for the tired ones. The heavy-laden. The mamma in the hospital chair. The mamma three months behind on the rent. The mamma whose marriage is hard and whose faith is shaking and who cannot remember the last time she felt like herself.

He is the only place in the universe where being depleted is not a disqualification. It is the qualification.

That is what David already knew when he prayed Psalm twenty-five. Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. He did not clean himself up before he came. He did not pretend. He came exactly as he was. Lonely. Afflicted. With nothing to offer but the truth of where he was standing.

You are allowed to come the same way, mamma.

You do not have to be okay first.

You do not have to have words. You do not have to know the right verse, or pray a pretty prayer, or feel any kind of strong. You can come and just say it.

Lord, I am lonely. I am afflicted. Turn to me.

That is enough. That is the whole prayer.

And here is what He promises in return.

Rest.

Not the kind that comes from a nap. Not the kind that comes from a vacation. Not the kind that depends on the fire finally going out, or the bills finally getting paid, or your child finally being healed. He promises rest for your soul. The deepest part of you. The part that has been holding the line so long you forgot what it felt like to set it down.

That kind of rest can come in a hospital room. In a yellow chair beside a bed full of wires. At two in the morning with the baby finally asleep on your chest. In the bathroom with the door locked, with three minutes before someone needs you again.

It is not circumstantial. It is Him.

And mamma, the part that has changed everything for me is this. The One inviting you to come is not a God watching the fire from across the room.

He is in it.

He sent His own Son into the fire of being human. Into a body that got hungry, and tired, and grieved, and bled. Into a death He did not deserve. Into the loneliness of being abandoned, on a cross, while the people who loved Him scattered. He knows what it feels like to be alone in a full room. He lived it.

So when He says come to Me, He is not calling you up to a distant throne. He is sitting down beside you on the floor. In your kitchen. In the hospital chair. In the bathroom with the door locked.

He is the friend who walks into the fire and does not back away.

There is a kind of alone that lives inside a full room. I know it. You know it. We have both sat in it.

But there is a difference between alone and unwitnessed.

You can be alone in a room full of people who cannot reach you, and still be witnessed by the One who can. Who already is. Who has not looked away once.

So today, the next time the loneliness rises in the middle of a room full of people, try this.

Take a breath.

Say it quietly, just to Him.

I am lonely and afflicted. Turn to me.

He already has.

You are not alone, mamma. Even when it feels like it. Even when the room is full and no one in it can hold what you are carrying.

There is One who can.

And He is right here.