We are never alone

I don't consider myself a religious person, though I do say grace at meals, and often talk with God. I think it's more an informal kinship with God than one of deep religious faith. I believe in Jesus, and I do go to church when children and time permits, but my vision of God has always one of a prankster God, a laughing God, that holds us in our pain, but would really love for us to recognize the deep humor there is in a lot of the things that happen in life.

God has shown himself to me in little ways to know that he does care, specifically around the issue of lonliness. Sometimes I think that my prayers don't go anywhere, or he's not listening. The year following my breakup from particularly bad relationship was one such time. I had spent 4 years with this toxic woman, and had become toxic in my own way, like it was some virus, that had jumped from her mother to her to me. Finally I had had enough and I broke it off.

I spent many months adjusting to not having anyone in my life. I returned to school, I got a new job, I started losing weight, I was even having weekly beers with the boys again, but I felt so awfully alone. The kind of alone that settles in around your joints and bones, and you try to shiver off like the cold.

One very lonely day, as I wandered around Strawberry Square in Harrisburg, unwilling to go home and be alone, but crazed in my isolation, I walked down to State Street and entered St. Patrick's Cathedral. I had never been there before, but I figured that if maybe God wasn't listening to me when I kneeled next to my bed, maybe the towering green spires of St. Patrick's would somehow amplify my voice and carry directly to God's ear.

I kneeled in the back and started to pray.
"Dear Lord, I know you already know this. You know everything, but I have to share this with someone, or I'm going to burst. It's too heavy for me to carry. I'm so alone God. I don't feel like there is anyone around, and I can't get rid of this feeling. It hurts like hell." I started to sob at this point, but I was the only one in the Cathedral, so I didn't care. "I just...I needed to talk to someone, and I'm so alone. Please help me carry this burden. Amen."

I kneeled there for another minute, just sobbing, and trying to compose myself. In the choir loft above me someone began quietly playing music on the organ. I slowly opened my eyes and looked up. There, in the dome above the altar, staring at me in giant gold lettering "Lo, I am with you always". I fell backwards and stared at the words. I started to sob again. Just like that, he'd heard me and answered. I sat there in the back pew, crying and crying forever, like the cork holding back all of the pain from my previous relationship was finally pulled, and I could get it out of my system.

Whenever I doubt that I'm being heard, or I feel like I'm alone, I remember back to those words of gold, and how God promised that he'd always be with me.

Like I said, I don't consider myself religious, but that for me cemented my relationship with God. Maybe you don't believe in God, or, like me, reject most of the current Christian notions of God. Maybe you believe in Buddha, or Allah. But I don't think we are alone. Something divine and benevolent showed that to me in that church 5 years ago. I hope that someday you too can experience something like I have.