the greatest lie Satan will ever tell you

You’ve heard it, I’m sure. Whispered in the dark of night. Shouted under the bright light of day. Slithering into the desperate places of your heart. Maybe it came while you were in crowds of people or locked in your bedroom with the curtains pulled tightly shut.

I’ve felt it in the deepest places of my pain and seen it echoed through my sorrows.

Sometimes it slips in quiet and makes itself comfortable on the edge of my mind. Other times it is so loud I cringe as it reverberates through my life.

But I hear it. Over and over.

It sounds like me talking but it’s really him: the Enemy of my soul.

The words?

 “I’m all alone.”

I’m all alone in my pain.
I’m all alone in my hurt.
I’m all alone in my life.
I’m all alone with no job.
I’m all alone with no friends.
I’m all alone in my marriage.
I’m all alone in ___________.
God left me all alone.

There is a reason the enemy uses this lie over and over. If you believe you’re all alone, no one can empathize with you.  If you believe you’re all alone, then no one is there to help you pick up the broken pieces of your life. If you believe you’re all alone, no one can call you to account for your sin because “they don’t understand your pain”. And if you believe you’re all alone, dear friends, no one can give you grace.

I know a beautiful woman who faced a horrendous tragedy. The birth of a stillborn son.

It was heart-shattering.

Week after week she sat in my Sunday School class saying, “I don’t want to be here but I am.” And week after week she had to fight the lie with every possible weapon. She had to choose to believe that she wasn’t all alone, even when it felt like she was.

One day during class she started to speak and then stopped. There was silence for some time and finally she whispered, “I know I should be over this by now…”

And because she was there and fought the lie, even when it felt like truth—she sat in a room full of women who “didn’t know” and grace poured over her.

“You just buried a baby,” someone whispered in return, “I don’t think you need to ‘get over it’.”

Something amazing happened. We hurt with her and cried with her and tasted grace together.

When she was pregnant again, my heart filled and my prayers deepened. And when she told the story of her next son crying as he was born and nothing sounding so beautiful—of the doctor and nurses and her husband all crying and how she couldn’t because all she could think was he’s alive! everything in me danced.

And this girl who has never buried a baby and that girl who has never faced infertility—together we’re not alone.

When I reach out from my pain to offer her comfort in hers—and when she looks up from hers to comfort me—Satan’s lies are buried in an avalanche of truth.  And none of us are really alone.        

Someone does not have to walk through the same pain to understand my suffering. And the same is true for you. We need to look out, look up– reach out our hands to those around us, and we’ll find that Satan’s lies are silenced.