Discovering Opportunity

Our family attended a wild church when I was a kid. Nothing that would ever make it on Dateline. No matching Snuggies. No snakes. No one ever offered a cup of red Kool-Aid. But people did run up and down the aisles waving homemade Jesus banners. An older man in the back blew a horn that looked like it had been peeled off a dead animal. My sisters and I were terrified to invite friends.

We didn’t have much money growing up. Often we were down to one car, and it was a coin flip whether it would even start. No ride? My mom made us walk to church from our apartment. I was mortified at the thought of a friend from the fancy neighborhood driving by and seeing me on foot.

One evening I sat in our piece-of-crap station wagon, parked in front of the church, watching my mom grow increasingly frustrated trying to start it. I was always fascinated when the grown-ups at church prayed for miracles — laying hands on someone, asking God to intervene. Sometimes it worked.

I remember thinking: if God can cure cancer, surely He can start this beater. So I reached out, placed my hand on the steering wheel, and said a little prayer in my head. I looked at my mom with all the confidence in the world. “Give it another try.” The car started right up. I looked at my sisters in the back seat. I looked at my mom. I looked down at my hand. I have the power!

I was destined to become the world’s most famous mechanic. It didn’t pan out.

You may think that night was a coincidence — a lucky break that I happened to pray at the exact moment the car started. Maybe. Or maybe it was the God of the universe proving to a young kid that He hears our prayers and cares about the little things. I lean toward the latter.

It wouldn’t be the last miracle I prayed for.

Years later, I was leading a startup church that met weekly at a movie theater in Arizona. I got an urgent call from family: my grandfather — Poppy — was in the hospital and probably wouldn’t survive the week. They wanted me to fly back to Texas and officiate his funeral. I dreaded boarding that plane.

I landed in Texas and headed straight for the hospital. Poppy was conscious, but pale and frail — the last years of his life spent fighting COPD from a lifetime working the oil fields. I remember holding his hand and asking if there was anything specific he wanted me to say at the funeral. He shook his head no. He just whispered: “Pray.”

I can’t explain why God grants some miracles and denies others. I wish we were allotted six “super prayers,” like a chamber of bullets in a revolver, fired with guaranteed results. I definitely wouldn’t have wasted a bullet on our station wagon as a kid. But it doesn’t work that way. Poppy passed away a few days later. I sure miss him.

Holding it together while officiating a funeral for a family member isn’t easy — I’ve done it five times now. The hardest part wasn’t saying goodbye. I was confident Poppy was now in the presence of his Creator with a body fully healed. The hardest part was looking into Granny’s eyes in the front row, knowing the loneliness ahead would be overwhelming — her husband and best friend of 55 years now gone.

The feeling of being all alone is terrifying. Loneliness brings an ache to your soul that no one escapes. Maybe you feel it right now, after losing someone close to your heart. Maybe distance from friends or family has you feeling it too. Maybe you’re single, holding out hope you’ll find your person, but today you’re just alone. Loneliness isn’t only about the absence of someone missing from your life — you can be married for years, sleeping eighteen inches from your spouse every night, and still feel completely alone.

I’ve been wrestling with loneliness in this season of my life. For years I’ve filled the void of singleness by staying active in my kids’ lives. But the realization that they’ll both be graduating and heading off to college soon scares me. It feels like I’m watching the sand drain to the bottom of a life-size hourglass, and the anxiety grows with each passing day.

Some nights when I don’t have my kids, I sit in the car in front of my house, trying to muster the courage to go inside. I know what’s waiting on the other side of that door: silence, and it’s deafening. I have to fight the urge to throw the car in reverse and go find a way to numb the evening. But that’s only a temporary fix, not a solution. Loneliness will still be sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at me, when I wake up in the morning.

I’ll be turning 30 in a few weeks — for the 21st year in a row. I’ll be taking a solo trip for my birthday this year. I call them personal retreats. My daughter calls them a vacation.

I’m looking forward to getting away, because I’ve discovered that in some of my darkest moments of loneliness, I’ve experienced profound closeness with God. Being alone is hard, but it’s also an opportunity. As much as I’d love to share this trip with someone, I know He plans to meet me in Colorado.

You have a Savior who knows what it feels like to be alone. Beaten and hung on a cross for everyone to see, Jesus felt a loneliness I can’t imagine. With darkness creeping in and gasping for His final breath, He felt the full weight of it.

I want you to know that He sees your pain too. He sees the burden of loneliness you’ve been carrying. He knows the number of tears you’ve cried this season. But He promises that if you seek Him, you will find Him. Lean into Jesus during this difficult time. Use it as an opportunity to grow closer to Him. Ultimately, He is the only one who can truly fill the void of your loneliness today.