08/13/2026
There is a particular kind of loneliness that happens in the presence of another person.
You say something. Maybe it’s small. “I’m tired.” “Today was hard.” “I’ve been thinking about something.” And some part of you waits for the turn. What happened? Tell me. Are you okay?
Sometimes it comes. And sometimes it doesn’t.
What fascinates me is how much can happen inside of us in the few seconds that follow, because we rarely experience only the moment we are standing in. We experience the moment plus every other moment it reminds us of.
So someone is distracted. Or tired. Or caught inside their own life. They don’t turn toward us in quite the way we hoped, and an old story quietly clears its throat: See? Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.
Suddenly, a person missing us in one moment becomes evidence for something we may have believed about ourselves for thirty years.
That is the part I find so interesting, because this is where relationship becomes a portal into our own orientation. Not, How do I make people see me? But, What happens inside me when they don’t?
Do I disappear? Get louder? Shut down? Decide they don’t care? Start collecting evidence from every relationship I’ve ever had? Do I abandon myself the moment I feel someone else’s attention move away?
And then there is another beautiful, uncomfortable question: How visible am I actually willing to be?
Because sometimes we desperately want to be known while simultaneously protecting ourselves from being known. We soften what matters. We say “it’s fine” when it isn’t. We wait for someone to ask the second question. We hope the right person will somehow know that underneath our ordinary sentence is a tender little, Please come closer.
There is nothing wrong with wanting that. Jesus. We are relational creatures. Of course we want someone to turn toward us. Of course it feels good when someone’s attention arrives and we can feel: There you are. I see you. Keep going.
But sovereignty changes what happens when they don’t.
Instead of immediately asking, What does this say about me? we can begin asking, What is actually happening here?
Maybe they’re unavailable. Maybe I wasn’t clear. Maybe this relationship has a limitation I need to see. Maybe I need to say, “Hey, I actually need you with me for a minute.” Maybe this person simply cannot meet me here.
All of those are useful information. None of them require me to turn one missed moment into a verdict on my worth.
And that may be one of the deepest shifts in relationship: to stop asking every person we love to unknowingly reenact our oldest story so we can finally solve it.
To become visible. To ask. To notice who turns toward us and who doesn’t. And to let what is actually happening now matter more than what the wound predicted would happen all along.
Because sometimes healing isn’t finally getting everyone to see you.
Sometimes healing is realizing that when someone doesn’t, you no longer disappear.