Now for some Nouwen

Today I discovered a Henry Nouwen book called "The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom." With an understanding that I have been experiencing an emotional lostness and loneliness recently, providing the description from the back of the book should explains why I am so intrigued:

This is Henri Nouwen's "secret journal." It was written during the most difficult period of his life, when he suddenly lost his self-esteem, his energy to live and work, his sense of being loved, even his hope in God. Although he experienced excruciating anguish and despair, he was still able to keep a journal in which he wrote a spiritual imperative to himself each day that emerged from his conversations with friends and supporters.

For more than eight years, Henri Nouwen felt that what he wrote was too raw and private to share with others. Instead, he published The Return of the Prodigal Son, in which he expressed some of the insights gained during his mental and spiritual crisis. But then friends asked him, "Why keep your anguish hidden from the many people who have been nurtured by your writing? Wouldn't it be of consolation for many to know about the fierce inner battle that lies underneath so many of your spiritual insights?"

And in response, I've decided to reflect on these "spiritual imperatives" and record my reflections. Let's call them Nouwenism.

Nouwenism #1
"Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people's response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule."

Wow, what a way to start this process of reflection. Did he write that directly to me? Recently I've been mourning the fact that I don't have many people to talk to about the grief I feel for my family situation. I feel lonely because I only have myself (and that God guy) to sit with in my sorrow and self-pity. But I think Nouwen offers a truth that I've never faced: "People cannot give you what you long for in your heart." Later in the note, he writes, "God will send to you the people with whom you can share your anguish, who can lead you closer to the true source of love." The important part, and most missed by me, is the hope that God will send someone who can lead you closer to the true source of love. Someone who can show me God is still there, He still cares, and He's still worth hanging onto. For that - I'll wait! Till then, maybe it is best to "close [myself] off to the world so [I] can enter [my] own heart and the heart of God through [my] pain."