Why Do I Feel Alone? – Jackson Switzer

The light of Christ is described in D&C 88 as “the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.”¹ The function of the entire known and unknown universe is dependent upon Jesus Christ. He is omnipresent, meaning all true knowledge is knowledge of Him, and all true progress is progress toward Him.

If this is the case, and if those who make and keep covenants with Christ are promised “that they may always have his Spirit to be with them,” then how is it possible for a disciple of Christ to feel alone?

It was a challenge for me for many years to reconcile my lived experience of God feeling distant with the promise of the Spirit’s constant companionship. I could not resolve the paradox, so I thought I must be missing something. I’m not the only one who feels this way; loneliness abounds.

One of the great moments of my life was when the Spirit taught me that I was not missing anything; His companionship is constant, but our awareness of His overt presence is periodic by design. This teaching was facilitated by the parable of the laborers in the field found in D&C 88:51-60 (which seems, incidentally, to be one of the least-discussed parables in all of scripture). Here I share what I learned.

The parable reads as follows:

Behold, I will liken these kingdoms unto a man having a field, and he sent forth his servants into the field to dig in the field. And he said unto the first: Go ye and labor in the field, and in the first hour I will come unto you, and ye shall behold the joy of my countenance. And he said unto the second: Go ye also into the field, and in the second hour I will visit you with the joy of my countenance. And also unto the third, saying: I will visit you; And unto the fourth, and so on unto the twelfth.

And the lord of the field went unto the first in the first hour, and tarried with him all that hour, and he was made glad with the light of the countenance of his lord. And then he withdrew from the first that he might visit the second also, and the third, and the fourth, and so on unto the twelfth.

And thus they all received the light of the countenance of their lord, every man in his hour, and in his time, and in his season—Beginning at the first, and so on unto the last, and from the last unto the first, and from the first unto the last; Every man in his own order, until his hour was finished, even according as his lord had commanded him, that his lord might be glorified in him, and he in his lord, that they all might be glorified.

You are one of the servants sent to labor in the field. You desire the “joy of [the Lord’s] countenance,” but in this life, this kingdom, it is not always easy to come by. You know God never abandons those who make and keep covenants with Him (or, in the parable’s terms, those who labor in His field), and yet it’s sometimes hard to feel God with you. The deeper your loneliness, the more pressing this question: Where is He?

If it were true God was no longer with you, there could be only two possible reasons: either He has abandoned His covenant or you have. Either He has forgotten you or you have rejected Him. This is where I found myself for so long, feeling the Spirit was barely with me, feeling profoundly lonely, and weighing the two possible explanations. Some days I felt sure I was living worthily, so I concluded that the Spirit’s constant companionship was an empty promise. Some days I felt sure God was true to His word, so I concluded that I must not be keeping my covenants (though I was honestly trying to). Most days I was unsure.

D&C 88 showed me a third possibility: maybe the presence of the Spirit wasn’t what I thought it was.

According to the parable, the Lord visited each laborer in turn, and then from each in turn “the Lord withdrew.” They were doing His work—they were true to Him, and He was true to them—and yet He withdrew. These periods of spiritual fog, then, are not contradictions of the Lord’s word; they are acknowledged in His word to be a deliberate part of how He operates! They do not mean He has forgotten you, nor do they necessarily indicate you are doing something wrong.

If we imagine “the Lord withdrew” to mean He left entirely, it contradicts His promise to be with us always. But with a proper feeling for the meaning of “withdraw” in this context, we see that He honors His promise, and our understanding of how He is present in our lives is enhanced. The Lord withdraws as a mother withdraws her hands when teaching her daughter to walk; the toddler must try on her own, but the mother stands by, watching and cheering and ready to intervene if she is needed. The Lord withdraws as a father withdraws his arms from around his despondent son; they have mourned and talked together, and he knows it is time for his son to rise and move forward with courage. The Lord withdraws as a friend withdraws to his own home after giving needed advice to a friend; he is thinking of him and rooting for him, but he cannot live for him. The Lord is not an absentee father; He is a Father who believes in you.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell shared a quote from Brigham Young and commentary of his own about how the Lord works with us:

Illustratively, I turn now to an excerpt from President Brigham Young’s secretary’s journal for a choice insight brought to my attention by Professor Ronald Esplin. When asked in conversation, “Why are men left alone and often sad? Why is not God always at man’s side promoting universal happiness at least for His Saints? Why does not God do everything for man?” President Young responded concerning how man’s divine destiny requires individual experience and practice in learning “to act as an independent being”—to see what we will do, whether we will be “for God or not”—and in developing our own resources. Such experiences will teach us to be “righteous in the dark—to be a friend of God” (Brigham Young Office Journal, 28 January 1857). This is a sobering and revealing insight about God’s plans for us here, and it underlines with urgency the need for the attribute of meekness, especially when one feels forsaken and forgotten and alone “amid th’ encircling gloom.”²

The purpose of the Lord’s periodic withdrawals is to test and give us opportunities to improve how we will use moral agency. If God heavily interfered, He would compromise the integrity of the test and rob us of the chance to learn.

Once you realize periods of relative spiritual dullness can be intentional and productive tools of the Lord, they are no longer a source of anxiety about your relationship with God. You can rest assured God’s plan is not awry if you are humble and honest in your obedience. In addition, if you cooperate with the Lord during these experiences, you begin to feel Him transforming you through them. You become familiar with the process and the sensation of spiritual learning—and, since “all things unto [the Lord] are spiritual,”³ it should not come as a surprise when you realize that these are analogous to the process and the sensation of other kinds of learning.

When learning new information or a new skill, the best way to improve is through intense learning sessions with rest in between. The effectiveness of spaced study sessions has been well established by scientific research.⁴ Study or practice for hours, take a break, sleep, and return the next day, and you often find you have improved during the period of rest. Alternation between both phases, practice and rest, is necessary. In time, the iterative process leads to mastery.

Does the parable of the laborers in the field not describe the same process? We need occasional short, intense periods of divine instruction interspersed between longer, quieter periods of divine subtlety. A lifetime of God’s uninterrupted immediacy, an endless firehose of spiritual power and clarity, would be overwhelming, not helpful. We need time between major revelations to process what we have learned. We need space to grow. Though we rarely like it, we need God to walk quietly by our side, observant, encouraging, and strong—listening, nudging, and gradually empowering us. During these phases, it’s often hard to see Him. That is how it should be.

The Lord never abandons us if we continue laboring in His field. He visits us unmistakably on occasion, and then He pulls back to let us return to our labors. Later, He returns. Later still, He recedes. On and on this goes, “from the first unto the last, and from the last unto the first, and from the first unto the last”—back and forth, visiting everyone intermittently in His due time. In the moments when His Spirit is with us overtly, we learn abundantly and receive clear instructions to fuel our next period of growth, as a plant in heavy rainfall. During the periods when His Spirit is less obvious, we grow slowly and steadily, almost indiscernibly, as a plant grows toward the sun.

Both phases are necessary manifestations of His grace. We need to be in the Lord’s presence, and we also need to use our agency to be “righteous in the dark.” The purpose of this holy, oscillatory process, in the words of the parable, is “that his lord might be glorified in him, and he in his lord, that they all might be glorified.” This is how we are sanctified. This is how we become one with Christ.

So when God speaks with clarity, trust Him, and when He isn’t speaking, trust Him all the same. Trust His choice to stay silent as much as you trust His words. When you have clear instructions, obey with confidence that He is with you. When you don’t, move forward into the dark with the same confidence. Both are intentional. Both are answers to prayer given in perfect wisdom and love. Both are necessary, fruitful parts of God’s work and glory.

It is possible, even with this knowledge, to be lonely. But loneliness is weakened and can be destroyed by the conviction that the experience of solitude is a valuable part of life but not a permanent feature of our reality and not a reflection of how much we are loved. We are always loved, so we are never really alone.

Notes