I remember being in High School, and the magic night that the boy I was infatuated with danced with me several times at a school dance. I floated home. At the next dance, he never looked at me and danced with another girl all night.
I went home devastated. She had to be prettier, nicer, much more lovable than I was. There had to be something really wrong with me.
I remember an interview I had for a job I really wanted. I thought the interview went very well. I didn't get the job. I was crushed for days. I knew the woman who eventually got the job and mentally I kept comparing myself to her, wondering in what way she had projected a better professional image than I had done.
But every time life devastates our self-esteem, our sense of being lovable and secure, Faith has a way of reminding us that of course we're loved, important, secure. We live in God's everlasting care. Eventually in High School, I realized that the boy I was infatuated with was a hopeless flirt who went after girl after girl, breaking heart after heart. At that point in his life, he was not worth the tears I was shedding.
After not getting the job I had wanted so desperately, I eventually got to know the man who did not hire me - and was very glad that I didn't get the job. He was right not to hire me. We never would have gotten along, couldn't have worked together as a solid team.
Loving us and knowing us completely, God understands our loneliness and insecurities and, if we follow Him in Faith, listen carefully to His Voice, wait upon His Will, He leads us to the right place with the right people, the right personalities that can mesh with ours so that together we can do God's work. It may be in a marriage, a job, a hobby, a church or charitable community. He will bring us to people who cherish us, who will ease our loneliness, give our life purpose.
Eventually I found a wonderful husband and together we built a strong family, a household of God that would be a refuge for many people. Eventually I found several jobs where I worked with wonderful people; together, one in the Spirit, we built strong, vibrant church communities.
All of our lives we have moments when inside we can feel young, fragile, unloved, insecure. If we've kept up our friendship with God, He touches our hearts quietly, reminding us of His steadfast love, and heals our pain. We remember Whom we belong to - and, secure, we can move on in peace. God asks us to pray hard for the ones who sadly don't know Who and Whose family they belong to yet and to believe our prayers can reach their breaking hearts.
"So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the capstone. Through Him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in Him you are also being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." (Ephesians 2: 19-22.)