In all of human experience I think there is nothing more painful than feeling abandoned.

The gnawing pain of loneliness, the feeling of being unloved and unlovable, robs life of hope and purpose and intensifies any suffering we may be going through. It was my experience when depression took over a significant part of my life for a time, and it made recovery all the more difficult.

 I thought no one could really understand the suffering. But my spiritual director reminded me that Jesus also knew what it was like to be abandoned in his darkest hour by those he loved most and the people for whom he sacrificed his life. Broken, bleeding, suffering excruciating pain, his last words from the cross in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew were, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

There were times when I asked the same question, and tried to get rid of the pain by writing it out of me. On the journey, God sometimes answered my cries with sparks of hope—glimpses of beauty, the right words, moments of laughter, the healing power of music, even the simple gift of birds keeping me company each morning. But nothing meant more to me than the gift Jesus gave to the thief on the cross next to him – an assurance of love. Love listens. Love forgives. Love gives hope.

  Joy is a memory

 fading softly in the gray mist

of pain.

I am helpless to stem its going

and too weary to worry

of its return.

If joy is the nature

of the soul,

I fear mine has died

a somber death of loneliness,

withered in a tomb

of broken promises.

Still a heartbeat echoes

in the poet’s words.

His psalm of life

ignites a spark of hope

where hopelessness

has reigned.

“Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal,

dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is the poet who wrote “A Psalm of Life.” His words came, for me, at the perfect time, and were part of the lesson of depression that we can all be sparks of hope for those who are suffering or feeling abandoned, if we are willing to love.

Longfellow ended his poem, in part, with these words: “We can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sand of time; footprints, that perhaps another, sailing o'er life's solemn main, a forlorn and shipwrecked brother, seeing, shall take heart again.”

 I can’t think of a greater gift than enabling someone to take heart again.

Link to photo http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u255/lop_truong_4_mat/alone.jpg