~I have discovered that what is not understood by anyone is most intimate with God; it is in this separation from others that I can find the closest intimacy and desire with God~

I’m sitting here in the stillness of my room at 1:19 a.m. My body is begging for sleep, but there is something too peaceful about this moment to let it pass. It’s funny, because I am not a night person, but that does not mean I don’t appreciate it. Something about the crickets outside my window, the keys clanking into my fingers with each letter I type and the knowledge that I am alone until morning to do as I please. Yes, something about that almost makes me want to be a night person.

I’ve thought a lot about friendship this past year, not particularly because I want to, but because that’s how life’s happened. Friendship is a perplexing thing, though any time you have humans interact it’s bound to be somewhat perplexing I’d imagine, seeing that we’re all a little “nutty.” I like people none the less, well, love people, but life still happens and so do friendships.

I don’t know how to say this better, so I’m just going to say it flat – people are beautiful. I love the way we need and don’t need, the way we hurt and pretend not to, the way we all laugh at different things until you find that some laugh in the room echoes you on the same thing, and the way you can find that one friend once in awhile who just gets you. I love that God can make two friends who get each other. When I say this I always think to the scene in Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth and Jane laugh and tell secrets in the unrealistically huge white bed of theirs. That sense is a real kindred spirit to me.

Though this is all lovely, unfortunately there’s a spin to things, a much less fortunate spin at that: yes, certain special friends may get you, but no one will ever fully understand you but God. It’s kind of hard to accept, but it’s true. In a lot of ways, no matter how many friends we have, even if they’re the Jane and Elizabeth, or Anne and Diana kind, we are still never completely understood.

Grappling with this at first was hard, because I want so badly to be understood by those I love so dearly, but in the end, I have finally found peace. I have discovered that what is not understood by anyone is most intimate with God; it is in this separation from others that I can find the closest intimacy and desire with the Lord. This is not to say that we shouldn’t let ourselves be known to trusted others, in the deep places too, but this is to say that no matter how much we try we mustn’t think they can fill that enigma of a space inside us with complete understanding. Perhaps this is what people mean when they say “fill yourself with God.” It is possible that it is not to cut off all the world from intimacy and only come to God, but rather, let those places where no other human can or even should fill be sufficient, or in some cases, brimming with the love of God. To me it makes sense, and it makes the idea of that human inner loneliness a whole lot more purposeful.

I will close with this, though I doubt many have read down this far. Though people may not understand us, though we may never be wholly known and though we may at times feel completely unknown, God blessed us with friendships for a reason. And despite how little a person may get you, it’s in the way the friend holds you when you cannot move, in the way you laugh at only things the two of you understand, in the way they let you dream and in the rifts that at times may not go well, but they try just the same. It’s somewhere in that, in that broken attempt to try to understand each other that makes a real friend, and when that brokenness succumbs to vulnerability to a trusted loved ones who’s just as broken, but selflessly loves them as best as they can, that, that’s what’s beautiful. And when we take our unknown sides to God in all brokenness and vulnerability and accept that he understands it better that us, that can move even the most unknown heart to joy.