Being surrounded is not the same as being known

You’re still show­ing up to church, to the group chat, to the small talk at the park. But show­ing up isn’t the same as being known. Some­where along the way, the peo­ple who were sup­posed to under­stand qui­et­ly stopped ask­ing. Maybe they did­n’t know what to say. Maybe you stopped let­ting them in. Prob­a­bly both.

This par­tic­u­lar kind of iso­la­tion does­n’t arrive all at once. It comes in unre­turned texts and con­ver­sa­tions that skim the sur­face and gath­er­ings where you smile so no one wor­ries. It comes from believ­ing your sit­u­a­tion is sim­ply too much, too com­pli­cat­ed, too spe­cif­ic for any­one to car­ry with you. And I get it.

But you were made for some­thing bet­ter than man­aged dis­tance. And the God who called Him­self Emmanuel—God with us—did­n’t design you to white-knuck­le this alone.

Remember

You are not out­side your Abba’s notice. “The LORD is near to the bro­ken­heart­ed and saves the crushed in spir­it.” Psalm 34:18

Read

“At Least It’s Not Worse”

Six plat­i­tudes that may have made things worse

A prayer for you

Next Step

Con­sid­er ded­i­cat­ing a few min­utes to com­plete the guid­ed reflec­tion. You were made to be seen and known. As a result of your work, you will receive an excerpt from the book that address­es pre­cise­ly where you are, a truth to pon­der, and a prayer.

Or per­haps you would sim­ply like to con­nect with us? You don’t have to keep walk­ing this road with­out com­pa­ny.