Insecurity and Security

The fact is, of course, that God has created us to need other people and to develop deep personal relationships. However, it is also true that no human relationship can ever be totally secure and stable, even though we try to convince ourselves at times that they are. The inherent insecurity in human relationships is true in every situation - not simply with friends and lovers, but also with marriage partners. Human nature really is imperfect and, because of our own hurts, we all hurt each other in many different ways. Life itself is also very tenuous, and a human relationship can be affected by death. So the answers to these very real problems of isolation and loneliness must involve more than just our physical and emotional human needs. This is where I guess you may be saying, "Well I know what's coming next!" Yes, of course, God wants to meet this deep-rooted need in all of us for a sense of 'being' and 'belonging'. Henry Nouwen in his book 'Reaching Out' (Fontana) talks about the need to work at being 'alone' rather than lonely. He talks about our need to work at aloneness with God, so that we can then move on to working at our relationships with others. He says the problem is often that we demand people to meet needs which only God himself can meet. This puts enormous pressure on our human relationships and actually creates the very insecurity that we fear. Henry Nouwen talks about learning to be alone with oneself and God, and then moving from that more secure position to being with others ('community'). This is a very helpful idea, but it can still be something to which I pay 'lip service', because it's not what I really want. I may believe it's something that I ought to desire, but my feelings still tell me that I need people. So I either continue to drift along in my search to overcome loneliness, or make some more positive steps in developing a relationship with another person. Then I find this doesn't work out so well and I seem to be back where I started!

Over recent years I have experienced a lot of emotional pain in different forms, some of it probably self-inflicted. However, I have also been aware of working at my relationship with God in new ways in terms of our communication with each other. I don't want to imply that I have reached tremendous heights of spiritual ecstasy, but I have tasted something of listening to God and sharing my deepest thoughts and feelings with Him in ways that I've not known before. This does not mean that each time I've been hurt, the hurt has been taken away or the pain particularly resolved, although this has sometimes happened in various ways. It has been much more a case of being aware of the only person who fully understands what is going on within me and around me and knowing that He is 'on my side'. As my relationship with the Lord has developed in this way, I have been aware of times when I've simply wanted to be alone with Him and felt in that aloneness a sense of security and comfort I haven't found anywhere else in quite the same way.