My heart is a fickle and fragile thing. I want to open up but I am afraid of intimacy. I am afraid of looking like a fool, I am afraid of rejection. Instead of being open I hide inside my head, and I hate it all the while. 

I cannot stand being unseen, unnoticed. My heart despises feeling small and set aside. I would rather receive attention for tearing things down than remain in the background, leaving others at peace. I am all too human. 

Love will not abide in such a self-centered heart. Beauty will not come to one so quick to strike her down. I grow frustrated with feeling alone, but I shoot myself in the foot when I am invited out of the hole I hide in. 

I want to love. I want to be loved. I know I ought to be content with the Lord’s loving gaze, and that alone. Yet I yearn to be seen by another. I get my heart all wrapped up in care for creatures and things of this world, and then I wonder why I am left feeling empty. 

But He has not created me to be by myself. He has created me to love. Is it my selfishness that keeps getting in the way? Surely so. I grow weary and I worry that a woman’s love is not for me. But could she even find her way into my heart if she wanted to enter? I don’t know. I just feel alone. 

Lord, I accept the loneliness. Keep self-pity far from my soul, for it poisons the roots of the seeds you’ve sown, when instead they ought to grow. Open my heart and let in the light of Your love, do not leave me to my own devices. If lonely You have called me to be, then let it be. Help me to want what You want for me.