There is a kind of loneliness that settles into the corners of a quiet kitchen at the end of a long Tuesday — the kind no one warns you about. The kind that hits while you’re standing at the counter trying to decide what to make for dinner.
That is where this week’s devotional begins. The night God met me in my kitchen in Renton, not to fix the ache, just to stay close. If you’ve ever stood in a quiet room and wondered whether anyone — God included — sees you there, this one is for you.
What Loneliness Cannot Take From You
A devotional for anyone who has stood in a quiet room and felt the weight of starting over
By Bruce Mitchell
The Night the Apartment Wasn’t Empty
The first night I knew I had really moved to Renton, I wasn’t signing a lease, lifting a box, or pulling into the parking lot for the first time.
I was standing at a kitchen counter, trying to decide what to make for dinner.
That was the moment.
That was when the move became real.
You can do all the work of a move and still not feel that you’ve moved. You sign the lease. You hand over the deposit. You drive the truck north. You haul the boxes up four flights because the elevator is taking too long. You collapse on the floor with a takeout container and call it a day. None of that, for me, was the moment. None of that made the address feel like mine.
The moment came on a Tuesday evening, two days later, when the boxes were mostly put away, the truck was returned, and the to-do list had gone quiet.
The apartment still smelled faintly of cardboard and cleaning solution. The walls were bare. The fridge had three things in it — milk, eggs, and a half-loaf of bread I’d grabbed somewhere on the drive in. The fourth-floor balcony looked out over a valley going gray under early-evening Pacific Northwest light. That tender, slate-colored October light that turns even a parking lot into something almost holy.
And inside, just me.
Just me and the hum of the refrigerator.
I leaned against the counter — and the loneliness hit harder than I wanted to admit.
It wasn’t the loneliness of a bad day. It was the loneliness of a long road. The kind that piles up over the years. No familiar footsteps in the hallway. No one to ask, How was your day? or Did you see the sunset tonight? Just the kind of quiet that reminds you that you are starting over again — and that no one is standing in this kitchen with you to start over with.
I have started over before. Plenty of times. Burbank to Biola. Biola to Dallas. Seminary to ministry. Ministry to whatever comes next, and then whatever comes after that. You’d think a man would get used to starting over. You don’t. Each time, the boxes weigh the same. Each time, the silence sounds different.
And this time, the silence sounded like Renton. A city I had not yet learned. A church I had not yet found. A grocery store where I did not yet know which aisle the chili powder was in.
For a moment, I felt foolish for feeling it so deeply. A grown man. A Christ-follower. A pastor at heart. Standing in a tiny kitchen, undone by silence.
But then — something happened.
Not a voice. Not a miracle. Not a verse fluttering into my mind like a movie moment.
Just a presence.
Gentle. Steady. Unmistakable.
A sense — and I can only describe it the way it came — that God Himself was standing in that kitchen with me. He didn’t fix the loneliness. He didn’t erase the ache. He didn’t hand me a five-year plan with footnotes about what came next. He just stayed. As if to say:
I know this hurts. I know this isn’t what you pictured. But I’m here. And I’m not finished with your story.
I didn’t suddenly feel brave. I didn’t suddenly feel whole.
But I felt held.
And for that night, that was enough.
I made dinner — chili, the kind with beef cubes that I always end up making because it tastes like home. I sat down at the table. And for the first time since moving to Renton, I didn’t feel like I was eating alone.
Not because the loneliness disappeared.
But because God met me in it.
Right there in the quiet. Right there in the ache. Right there in the beginning of a chapter I hadn’t chosen but was learning to trust Him with.
— — —
Four Words From the Garden
There is a verse I have read a thousand times. It sits early in Genesis, before sin, before sorrow, before any of the ache that would come later.
Adam is in a perfect garden. He walks with God in the cool of the day. He has work that delights him. He has creation laid out around him in stunning order. And yet — looking at this man, in this paradise — God Himself speaks four words that have echoed through every quiet apartment, every empty pew, every late-night kitchen ever since:
It is not good that the man should be alone. (Genesis 2:18, NLT)
Sit there a moment.
Adam was not depressed. Adam was not in sin. Adam was not wandering. Adam was in the closest possible communion with God — the kind of communion you and I keep stretching toward our whole lives — and still God said:
This is not enough on its own. He needs another.
Which means the longing you carry for someone to share life with — the deep human ache for companionship — was not invented by your wounds. It was woven into you by your Maker.
Your loneliness is not a flaw in your faith. It is a fingerprint of God’s design.
And He does not shame you for feeling it.
That night in Renton, I didn’t have a verse in my mind. I just had the hum of the fridge and the weight in my chest.
But days later — the way Scripture often comes — a verse drifted up through the quiet like a lantern someone had set out for me. David, on the run, in a cave, in a season I do not envy:
Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. (Psalm 25:16, NLT)
David didn’t pray, Lord, take this away. He prayed, Turn to me. As if the cure for loneliness, in that moment, wasn’t the absence of the ache. It was the presence of God inside it.
And God did not rebuke him for the prayer. God did not say, You should be stronger than this. You’re a king. You’re the giant-slayer. God turned.
He always turns.
I want you to feel the weight of that for a second. The man writing those words had stood before Goliath. Had been anointed by Samuel. Had played the harp for a king. Had hidden in caves with men nobody else wanted. And he was still capable of waking up some morning and writing, I am lonely and afflicted. If David could pray that prayer with his résumé, you can pray it with yours.
And the God who turned for David is the same God standing in your kitchen.
And then — Psalm 34. The verse most of us have heard so often it has nearly lost its weight, until you find yourself in the kind of night that gives it back to you:
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18, NLT)
Not distant. Not disappointed. Not delayed.
Close.
The Hebrew word there — qarôb — doesn’t mean somewhere in the neighborhood. It means near enough to touch. Near enough to hear a whisper. Near enough that no one has to shout.
He bends low. He stays close.
That is who He is.
— — —
The Ache No One Talks About
Loneliness is a strange ache. It is one of the few sufferings that makes you ashamed of suffering.
You break a leg, you tell people. You get hard news at the doctor, you ask for prayer. But loneliness? Loneliness you carry quietly. You hide it behind being busy. You hide it behind being fine. You hide it behind, Oh, I’m just enjoying the season God has me in.
And sometimes you are.
But sometimes you’re standing in a kitchen at the end of a long Tuesday, and you would give a great deal for one familiar voice to come through the door.
And here is the part nobody warns you about: loneliness has more than one face.
There is the loneliness of being single longer than you ever pictured.
There is the loneliness of a marriage where the conversations have gone shallow.
There is the loneliness of widowhood, where the chair across the table will never be filled the same way again.
There is the loneliness of leadership — standing in front of a room every Sunday and going home to no one who fully understands what that costs.
There is the loneliness of being the parent of a prodigal, surrounded by people, carrying a grief no one else is allowed inside of.
There is the loneliness of being new — to a city, to a job, to a church, to a chapter you didn’t choose.
They are not the same loneliness. But they share a voice.
Loneliness whispers.
You’re forgotten.
You’re invisible.
Everyone else has someone.
You’re too much, and also not enough.
If you were really walking with God, you wouldn’t feel this.
That last one is the cruelest. Because it takes a normal human ache and dresses it up as spiritual failure.
Let me say this plainly, friend, the way I had to say it to myself that night against the counter:
Loneliness is not a sin. It is not a sign of weak faith. It is not evidence that God is far. It is not a verdict on your worth.
It is the sound of a heart God designed for relationship, telling the truth about what it was made for.
And the right response to it is not to bury it. It is not to fix it with frantic activity. It is not to numb it with a screen.
The right response is the response Adam never got to make in the garden — but David made in the cave, and Jesus made in Gethsemane, and you and I get to make at the kitchen counter:
We turn toward the only One who can sit with us in it without flinching.
— — —
The God Who Stays
Here is what I learned, leaning against the counter in Renton, with the chili half-considered and the boxes half-unpacked:
God does not always come to fix.
Sometimes He comes to stay.
We tend to want a God who shows up like a fire crew — bright lights, loud sirens, problem solved. And there are moments when He moves like that. There really are. I have lived through some of them. I have story after story.
But more often, in my experience, He comes the way He came that night.
Quiet. Steady. Unmistakable.
He doesn’t change the apartment. He doesn’t change the season. He doesn’t move the furniture or fill the chairs or hand you the next chapter ahead of time.
He just walks into the kitchen with you.
And somehow, that is enough.
Jesus said it like this, on the night before everything fell apart for His friends:
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. (John 14:18, NLT)
Sit there a second. He did not promise to remove the loss. He did not promise to undo the cross that was coming. He did not promise that their lives would suddenly be easy.
He promised — I will come to you.
That is the grace. Not the absence of ache. The presence of Him inside the ache.
Think about when He said it. The Last Supper was over. The bread had been broken. The cup had been passed. Judas had already slipped out into the dark. The cross was hours away, and the disciples didn’t know it yet, but a Saturday was coming when their world would feel emptier than any of them had ever felt anything. And in that moment, Jesus didn’t hand them a strategy. He handed them a Person. The Spirit. Himself. The Father. The whole Triune God leaning in on the very night He could have been excused for leaning out.
That is the kind of God we are dealing with. The kind who, on the worst night of His life, was still busy comforting the people who were about to abandon Him.
And Hebrews picks up the same thread, like one long sentence stretched across the whole Bible:
Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5, NLT)
In the Greek, that promise is layered with negatives the way you’d stack blankets on a cold night. Never, no never, never in any way, never under any circumstance. It is the most emphatic I’m not going anywhere the New Testament can say.
You are not eating alone.
You may be eating with no one across from you. But you are not eating alone.
I have come back to that sentence more times than I can count. On nights when the chili was good and on nights when I burned it. On weeks when the calendar was full and on weeks when no one called. On Sundays when the sermon landed and on Sundays when it didn’t. The kitchen has not always been quiet, and it has not always been loud, but it has never — not once — been empty in the way it felt empty before that night.
Because He came in. And He has not left.
That is the difference He makes.
Not always more company. Sometimes, in the long seasons. But always — more Presence.
And the Presence is what holds you while the company is being prepared.
Because Psalm 68 says something we tend to skim past:
God settles the solitary in a home. (Psalm 68:6, ESV)
He does not leave us solitary forever. He gathers people. He stitches together communities. He sets the lonely in families. He sets pastors-at-heart in congregations. He places friends across kitchen tables. He brings, in His timing, what He knows we need.
But sometimes the home He is preparing for your heart is being built while you are still standing alone in the apartment.
And while He builds, He stays.
He bends low.
He stays close.
He does not leave.
— — —
When the Wait Is Long
Now — here is where I have to be honest, because Bruce trying to write something pretty about a season he hasn’t lived in, which is a Bruce I don’t want to be.
Sometimes the wait is long.
Sometimes the home God is preparing takes years to come into view.
Sometimes the kitchen stays quiet for a season you didn’t budget for.
I have walked with people — men and women I love — who have stood at their kitchen counters for years and not yet seen the company they hoped for. Singles in their forties. Widows in their sixties. Empty-nesters whose phones don’t ring the way they used to. Faithful Christ-followers who keep showing up to small group with a smile and go home to a silence that has never quite left.
I will not pretend I have an explanation for that. I don’t. I have a worn-spine Bible and a few verses I keep returning to and a long list of friends whose names I have prayed by name into the quiet. That is what I have.
But I have learned this much.
The Presence does not get smaller when the wait gets longer.
If anything, the Presence becomes more familiar. More lived-in. Less like a guest you’re tidying up for and more like a Father who knows where the chili powder is, because He has been in this kitchen with you long enough.
And in the long wait, He does something we don’t always notice while it is happening:
He grows the soul.
Quietly. Steadily. Without fanfare. The way roots grow in winter — unseen, but real. The kind of growth that does not happen in the easier seasons. The kind of growth that, looking back, you would not trade.
I am not saying the long wait is a gift. I am saying that He is a gift, even in the long wait. And those are not the same sentence.
If the wait has been long for you — if you are reading this and the kitchen has been quiet for years and you are tired of brave-sounding sentences from people who don’t know what they are talking about — hear me say:
You are not forgotten by Him.
You are not behind on His timetable.
You are not loved less than the ones whose stories moved faster.
And the years you have spent in the quiet are not wasted years. He has been in them.
— — —
What to Do With the Quiet
So if you are standing in a kitchen tonight — literal or otherwise — let me offer you what I wish I had spoken out loud that night in Renton:
You don’t have to be brave for this.
You don’t have to be put-together. You don’t have to be over it. You don’t have to have a verse memorized and a smile ready and a five-point plan for getting your life back.
You just have to let Him in.
Not in the front-door, sermon-quoting, hands-raised way. We do that on Sundays, and that is good and right. But here, in the kitchen, in the quiet — let Him in the small way. The honest way.
Tell Him the truth about the ache.
Tell Him you are tired.
Tell Him you don’t know what is next.
Tell Him you wish someone were standing in this kitchen with you.
That is not a weak prayer. That is one of the most honest prayers you will ever pray.
And while you are at it — do the small, ordinary things that have always opened the door for grace. Open the worn-spine Bible to a Psalm. Make the meal anyway, even when you are eating alone. Sit on the balcony for ten minutes and watch the light change. Call the friend you keep meaning to call. Walk into the church on Sunday even when it would be easier to stay home. None of these will fix the ache. All of them will leave the door cracked open for the One who walks through it.
Grace tends to come through small doors.
And He will not leave.
He will sit with you while the chili simmers. He will be there when the dishes are done. He will be there when the apartment is dark and you wonder if anyone in this whole valley knows your name.
He knows your name.
He has not forgotten the address.
He is not finished with your story.
The longing you carry is not a problem for God to solve. It is a doorway for God to walk through.
A doorway into deeper prayer. A doorway into the kind of dependence that does not come during the easy seasons. A doorway into the tender, lived-in love of a Father who specializes in showing up exactly where everyone else has stopped showing up.
If loneliness is the door, He is the One on the other side.
And He is already knocking.
He has been knocking the whole time.
— — —
Breathe here. Let that settle.
What stirs in you right now?
Reflection Questions
- Where, in your everyday life — the kitchen, the car, the empty pew — does the ache of loneliness meet you most often?
- Which of loneliness’s whispers has been loudest for you lately? Forgotten? Invisible? Too much? Not enough? What would it sound like to answer it with Scripture instead of with silence?
- If God is not asking you to be brave or fixed tonight — if He is only asking to stay with you in the kitchen — what would it look like to simply let Him?
A Prayer for the Lonely Heart
Father,
You see this kitchen. You see this counter. You see the place I am standing right now — physical or otherwise — and You have not turned away.
I am tired of pretending I am fine when I am not. I am tired of carrying this quiet. I am tired of acting as though wanting someone to share life with is somehow beneath the faith I have been given.
So I am bringing it to You. The whole ache.
Turn to me, and be gracious to me, for I am lonely.
Not because I doubt You. But because I trust You enough to say it out loud.
Come close. Closer than the silence. Closer than the lies. Closer than the years I have been carrying this. Settle me in the home You are preparing — for my heart first, and for whatever else You see fit to bring.
Until then, stay.
Stay while I cook. Stay while I sleep. Stay while the next chapter is being written by hands I cannot see.
Remind me that I am not eating alone. That I am not walking alone. That I am not building this new life alone.
And when loneliness comes back — because it will — meet me in it again. Bend low again. Stay close again.
Because You always do.
In the name of the One who would not leave us as orphans —
Amen.
— — —
He did not fix the kitchen. He stayed in it. And that — quietly, slowly, faithfully — was enough.
I’d love to hear what stirred in you.
If you’ve read this far, thank you from my heart.
I write every word prayerfully—not to impress, but to reflect Christ’s love and grace—in theology, yes, but especially in relationship. I pray something here has whispered to you:
You are not alone. You are deeply loved.
Grace. Always grace.
With love, prayer, and expectancy,
Bruce Mitchell
A voice of love & grace—always grace
Bruce@allelon.us
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“Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love conceals a multitude of sins.” —1 Peter 4:8
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