Eeyore or Pooh

This blog entry http://www.incourage.me/2011/09/savoring-time-together.html) from (in)courage spurred this remembrance: For 19 years, we lived in a transient community near Baptist Bible College in NE, PA. I hated it. I would make good friends getting closer and closer during their time at the college (through our local church) and then they would be off...to ministry, back home, wherever God wanted them to go. Then one fall seven years later, I found myself remarking to another woman in the church, "I wonder who God is going to bring to us this year." Know how your own words can shock you when you hear them coming from your mouth? Where had the change come from? From hating the separations and feeling that God was taking from me, to eagerly looking to see who He would bring next. Ah....God had done a sweet silent work in my heart. What a special blessing when the God of the Universe touches us. Perspective is so important.

Loneliness (part 1)

From my journal today...I googled "lonely" and "loneliness" and was surprised to find so much discussion:blogs, books, even studies.I keep trying to identify this feeling. I want it to go away. It's uncomfortable. I feel empty. I thought it was anxiety--this feeling of tears behind my eyeballs for no apparent reason, this search for peace and rest. I've been told that emotions are trecherous advisors and since I have a history of being an emotional thinker (moody), I am quick to think that the emotion itself is wrong. I think I'm just lonely. I walk into church (a normal social place for me) and say hi and struggle with small talk but what I am really looking for is connnection. I search people's faces hoping for a glimpse of...what? "I see you, you are of value to me, I have room for you in my life." I have potential friend radar up but yet I am very afraid of being too needy and I am terribly afraid of rejection (or perceived rejection). Somehow I view this as a problem--something is WRONG with me, if only I was plugged into God correctly, I would be full. I hear "God is enough" and I desperately want Him to be. But then I know also that He made us to be relational.
So, would you dialogue with me about this? I'm sure now that I am not the only one who feels this way. Just writing this makes me feel better (a diagnosis helps). Will I really press "publish" or be safe and keep it hidden in my journal? I did spend time this morning doing a study of "lonely" and "alone" in the Bible...that may be in part 2.