I’m into James Arthur at the moment. Just loving his lyrics and sound. He has written a song, “Let me love the lonely” – it is perhaps unknowingly to him, a deeply spiritual song, whose lyrics speak of the desire to have someone who will love us intimately. I have listened to it often, lately.
If the readers of this Blog had opportunity to read the post, ‘Casual…’ they would know of the heartache of Your love, God, offered but rejected for casual lovers – lovers who are not and cannot be intimate with our souls.
Love so perfect, able to satisfy thoroughly all the emotional, mental, spiritual, heart and soul needs of us, has been rejected since the beginning of time, for ‘casual’ love. God, You reveal to Hosea that You are a broken-hearted lover. Though You deeply experience the heartache of love rejected, You are also grief-stricken, watching on as humanity gives themselves over and over, to lovers that can never satisfy.
You have privileged me with insight into Your heart through Hosea, but equally, I have also seen the heart of my girlfriends, the precious ‘Gomer’s’ of my world – and at the heart of them, is love that has caused their deep pain. Hurtful words spoken (or words left unspoken) that have defined their being and destiny; shattered self-worth from actions and words that have left them feeling of little or no value; parents who haven’t been able to provide the safe emotional love they desperately needed in their vulnerable years; a continual search for love in people and things; and those haunting questions, “Am I worthy of love? Who will love me, for me? What is it about me that I cannot find the love my heart so longs for?” all contribute to their pain. I hear their anger as they recall those times treated only as sex objects – the crude comments, the gestures, the looks, the abuse. I see the ache of repeated failure of relationships – the honeymoon, the ‘marriage’, the break-up. And with sorrow, I see the impenetrable walls built to guard their hearts, grow wider and taller and deeper, lest they be hurt – again! – all the love they have ever known has hurt.
It’s why they choose ‘casual’. The fear of love being painful and the vulnerability that always seems to accompany love causes them to reject true intimacy, but ‘casual’ is a destructive love– it makes them lonelier than ever.
I know this is true of my life: the things I seek fulfillment in, the people I rely on to keep my self-worth intact…things and people that always leave me wanting for something deeper than they have the ability to offer.
The deepest part of us is lonely for love that cannot be found in others, yet the relentless pursuit of it drives us on. When we cannot be filled up with someone, we look elsewhere to things – the purchase of things, the doing of things, the pursuit of anything to fill that empty void, but the nature of casual means it will never be anything more than that, ‘casual’. Being ‘married’ to You is the only way we will ever find our love needs met.
“There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 MSG)
These words speak to both the pain You carry and the heart of my girlfriends, the heart of all humanity. “There is more to sex than mere skin on skin.” We are beings with so much more depth to us than merely our skin – having a soul that needs to know its worth, a spirit designed to be intimately linked to You, a complex mind that is only safe when loved well or else caves in to anxiety, or depression, and a heart that feels and experiences every word spoken, every deed done…deeply.
We are an intricate, complicated assemblage of interconnected parts that do not exist independently of each other.
Having ‘sex’ without intimacy, casual relationships, mere skin on skin experiences with all those things we pursue to fill us up, and the desire to keep hidden our fear of vulnerability, never fills that need we have to ‘becoming one’. Becoming one was Your created ideal – we were designed to be one with the Lover of our Souls, the source of love. Linked spiritually with You in the creation of us, yet denying this, and seeking casual relationships with other lovers, avoiding commitment and intimacy, leaves “us more lonely than ever”.
It is a loneliness that comes from feeling ‘soul alone’. Loneliness that comes from the need for our heart and soul, spirit and mind, our entire being, to be loved to its complex, complicated, intricate, depths.
You carry this pain towards humanity, knowing the love You have for us fulfills, completes, satisfies, yet has been rejected – the seeking instead, of ‘casual’ lovers that never satisfy and who leave us lonelier than ever. Your continual whisper heard, “Let me love the lonely part of you” is met with the reply, “Don’t you dare love me!” Only You can love us to our depths! Our fear-filled hearts, ruined by the accumulation of broken love experiences respond the same as Gomer’s did to Hosea: we turn and walk away. It’s too hard to trust ourselves to love.
Continued in next week’s blog…
[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]
One reply on “The lonely part of you…”
Love this, beautiful lady xxxx