Beloved Friend,
I once heard Kathryn Kuhlman say that a consecrated life is a lonely life.
The first time I came across that, something in me went quiet. Those words crystallized my emotions in that season.
It is true. There are paths in life that you will walk alone no matter what. No matter how loving your family is, loving your friendships are, beautiful your community is, or how present the people around you try to be. There are specific stretches of road that has your name on them and only your name. It could be decisions that keep you up at night that you cannot fully explain to anyone, places God is taking you to that make no sense even to those that love you the most, seasons of preparation that looks like nothing from the outside and assignments that require obedience that seem absurd.
Nobody can walk those stretches for you, or even fully walk them with you.
Now I want to be clear about something here. Community is a genuine gift, as well as friendship. Scripture is full of the beauty of people doing life together, carrying one another’s burdens, sharpening each other, holding up each other’s arms the way Aaron and Hur held up Moses when he grew tired. God designed us for one another and that design is good and worth cherishing.
The problem isn’t community. The problem is when we ask community to do what only intimacy with God was designed to do.
There is a kind of loneliness that friendship cannot touch. There is a specific ache that comes with consecration, with being set apart, with walking a path that’s yours alone, and no amount of good company will reach it. People have tried. They fill their schedules so there is no room for the ache to surface. They surround themselves with noise, activity, people and conversation. They look for in relationships what can only be found in the secret place. They look for in validation what can only be settled by the voice of God over their lives.
It never works, it can’t work. Not because the relationships are bad or the people are wrong. It is that they were never built to carry that particular weight. You end up exhausting people with needs they were not designed to meet. You end up in the wrong places looking for the right thing.
Kathryn Kuhlman walked one of the most remarkable and costly paths in modern Christian history. The miracles, the ministry, the presence of God that followed her life were not accidental. They were the fruit of a woman who understood that certain things could only be sustained in the place of intimacy with God. In the consecrated place that most people are too restless to stay in long enough. Our lives might not be tailored in this manner but the peculiarity of one’s walk with God is sure.
The call isn’t to be less connected to people. It’s to be so connected to God that when the lonely parts of the path show up, and they will show up, you are not blindsided by them. You are not scrambling to fill them with the wrong things. You are grounded in something that doesn’t shift when the room empties and the noise settles and it is just you, God and the path ahead.
Intimacy with Christ isn’t a supplement to a full life. It is the thing that makes a full life possible. It is what keeps you grounded when the path gets narrow. It is what keeps you from looking for companionship in places that will cost you more than you intended to spend.
With thoughts of kindness,
ABBA’s Shofar.