The Blanket and the Light.

It's like a blanket wrapped around me and over my head, suffocatingly too warm and nowhere to escape. Like standing in a room full of people, yet I feel swallowed in by myself.

In my mind everyone is staring, laughing and pointing at me, as if I'm some sort of circus act. But It's all in my head, no one is actually doing that, right?

I never knew it would find me, the loneliness, till it came creeping in like a long-legged spider. Then feeling as if I have no one but myself, even with loved ones all around me.

The scratching feeling in the pit of despair and loneliness as you are falling backwards into it, is - as if darkness is the only thing I can see and touch and think. Nothing can get you out of it, no one can save you from it. it consumes you, until there is nothing left of you. it kills you, making you think there is no one for you, not even an animal could cure you from this sickness. It sticks to you like a leach, sucking your life force from you. Until you're just an agoraphobic walking dead.

That was me, until I heard a voice in my head. It was calling me to somewhere; I didn't know where it wanted me to go, it only ever gave me small bits of information to different locations in my hometown. there, in those places, it would talk to me, saying that everything will be Ok, that I will get out of this swallowing loneliness, it said that loneliness isn't the end.

The last thing it told me to do, was to go out to the local park, and to be bold and strike up a conversation with the first person to pique my interest. So, I got in my car and headed to the park.

I decided that a walk would help me scout out the park for the right person.

After walking for 10 minutes, I came upon a woman sitting on one of the benches that are spotted along the path every two hundred feet or so.

She had the most gorgeous ginger hair, it was big and curly, it was very long as well.

I almost didn't say anything to her and walked on by; but something stopped me. 'Talk to her'. It spoke in my mind. After awkwardly standing there for a few seconds, I finally said. "Hello! I just felt.... inclined to say how much I like your hair, it's just so beautiful." A few seconds pass then I say. "Sorry, you must get that all the time."

"No worries!" she says. "That is quite all right. Thank you. and, Yeah, I do get it a lot. But it doesn't really bother me." After she said that I intended to just say, 'of course. Well, have a nice day then.' But I didn't.

"Um, well I... uh. h-How's your day been? and your walk, how was or is your walk going?" I practically choked out.

"My day has been going wonderful, and my walk was great. I'm just taking in the view now, it's a lovely park, isn't it?" she pauses for a moment for me to mumble a response "Yes, it is." Then she goes on.

"I grew up here in this town, and this place has only gotten more beautiful. Nature ages breathtakingly, and I can only wonder who could have imagined it, then created it." I take a second to say something back. "I have as well wondered that, and I try to think of why it was created or why we were created. But I never can come up with an answer." I say back to her, not even sure why I said that last part. "I may have an answer for that question, if you'd like to hear it. I also need to be completely honest with you."

She takes a slow breath; her eyes drifted to the trees swaying above me. "Come, take a seat." She pats the spot next to her on the bench. I sit and she continues.

"I know who created nature, and the earth around you, and I know who created you, and me. The One who imagined it all and then made it to be, where we are now."

I feel a shift inside of me, not hurting or uncomfortable, but a warmth, like a hand on my shoulder. And she goes on.

"When I look around at nature, I can't help but think someone must've created it. Because there is beauty in the way nature flows together, how everything fits into each other, even the cracks and hollows have a beauty to them." She pauses. and the breeze picks up for a moment, and I can see the sun shining through the leaves on the trees.

"I believe in God, He is the one who created it all, and I believe He brought you here today specifically to talk to me. Is there anything I can pray for you about? Oh! And where are my manners. What's your name? My name is Eliana, by the way."

I feel my heart racing as she speaks to me, because she's right, I was sent here by It or God, I suppose It is, to talk with her. "My name is Samantha and you have a beautiful name. Yes, I think I do need prayer. I guess the voice I've been hearing has been God and He brought me here" I take a deep breath and glance to the swaying trees, and the lovely blooming flowers, then my gaze drifts towards the pond in the center of the park, it really is such a mesmerizing place. I look back at her.

"I struggle with loneliness. And in that struggle, and I find it hard to be happy. I live by myself, and my family lives far from me. I have friends, but I still feel a looming darkness over me, and it feels like I'm suffocating and there's nowhere to escape. I try to fill the hollow in my heart with different kinds of things, but nothing has ever helped for longer than a few days.

And I just don't want to feel this way anymore. It's deafening, even with so many people around me, I still feel like there is no one out there for me. No one to make me feel whole again."

After telling her all of my thoughts and struggles. She told me she related so much with me that she even thought we were the same person. Then she told me her testimony. How the Lord saved her from loneliness and the same thoughts I had, how she thought there was no one for her and no to save her.

She prayed for me and we cried and we sat there talking for a couple of hours.

The Lord met her where she was, and the way He did that was through a friend of hers. That friend spoke truth and life to her through many gospel conversations and Bible studies. She eventually gave her life to Christ and was baptized. Then sometime later that friend, is her now husband.

"Thank you so much for talking with me, I feel much lighter, like a weight has been lifted off of me. And I feel a presence, but not suffocating or dark. It's light and airy, and beautiful." I wiped my eyes and she smiled softly at me before saying.

"I am only here because God put me here to specifically talk with you. And I'm so grateful that I did come here. I believe I've made a new friend.'"

"I believe you have, and I as well."

At the end of our seemingly endless lovely conversation, we exchanged phone numbers. And plan to get coffee on Friday morning. continuing our talks about God and the Bible, speaking of, she got me one.

I take a deep breath, and I no longer feel the grasp of loneliness and the tightening feeling of cling wrap wrapped around my chest. That sensation of falling endlessly backward has finally stopped. And the touch of someone's hand on mine, bringing me back up to solid ground, has brought me peace. He has made me complete and at peace, filling me with new life and leading me through deep waters every day. Loneliness didn't have the final word - He did.