If Everything Is Growing…Why Do I Still Feel This Lonely?
The tension of new beginnings when your joy hasn’t caught up yet
The journey to joy is lonely.
I have feelings about it being the first day of spring. In Virginia, the seasons actually follow the calendar. In Mississippi, spring shows up early February and is in full bloom (for the whole of two weeks) from mid-March to early April. But in Virginia, spring is a legitimate season—with the “pollening” stretching well over a month.
But, alas, we are not there yet.
My grass just turned green this week, but we are still a little ways away from spring.
I think loneliness is a side effect of winter—but it’s felt most deeply at the cusp of spring. In these in-between seasons, your brain starts reaching for what’s coming: fresh starts, new life, growth. There’s an awareness that something is changing, even if you can’t fully see it yet.
And yet—just because something is beginning doesn’t mean everything suddenly feels new. Things might be growing, but my joy still feels buried underground.
I think joy and loneliness feel like opposites. Not solitude—loneliness. There’s a difference. Loneliness is the ache for belonging. Solitude is the choice of being alone. One feels like something is missing. The other feels like something is being made.
And lately, I’ve been sitting more in the first one.
With Easter approaching, I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus on the cross—and how lonely that moment must have been. Not just physically, but spiritually. When He cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”—that wasn’t poetic language. That was real separation. Real weight. Real abandonment.
And I keep coming back to this question: Can He relate to my loneliness?
Can He understand this ache for joy that hasn’t quite surfaced yet?
I think the answer is yes—but maybe not in the way I expected.
Because Jesus doesn’t just understand loneliness—He entered into it fully. He didn’t bypass it. He didn’t rush through it. He didn’t numb it or explain it away.
He sat in it. He carried it. He redeemed it.
And somehow, that changes things for me. Not because the loneliness disappears overnight—but because it means I’m not alone inside of it. It means that even here, in this strange space where things are beginning but don’t feel complete, where life is budding but joy feels buried—God is not distant. He is present in the in-between.
Maybe joy isn’t absent. Maybe it’s just not fully visible yet. Maybe it’s the kind of thing that grows quietly before it blooms. Maybe the journey to joy isn’t about escaping loneliness as quickly as possible—but learning that even here, I am held.
Even here, I am seen. Even here, something is growing.
And maybe, just maybe…that’s where joy begins.
- Reanna
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