I was there

I remember it all too well

It’s Tuesday, and I’m going through my old journals, 2023 to be exact. There’s a heavy, almost tangible nostalgia resting on my chest as I leaf through the pages. I want you to feel this nostalgia with me, so let me paint a scene.

I’m on my bed in 2025. Morning devotion just ended, and the air still carries the faint warmth of whispered prayers. My room is quiet except for the soft rustle of paper as I flip through old entries. A cold breeze slips through my window and brushes my skin. After fellowshipping with God, my heart is a mixture of regret and gratitude, swirling heavily inside me.

Something urges me to reach for my 2023 journal. I already know what I’ll find there. I’ll see a girl — newly Christian — with confident handwriting and even more confident convictions. Her words are vibrant, brimming with visions from God. Notes from her quiet time stretching into full pages until they resemble carefully drafted sermons. Fellowship so intimate it makes my current efforts feel like faint echoes. A closeness I now remember the way one remembers a dream they loved too much to wake from.

Instead of starting from the beginning, I turn to the last pages. My gratitude list. A tradition older than the habit of journaling itself. One hundred things from the entire year. I read through them slowly, and I find myself thanking God all over again. The memories warm me, briefly. I decide to start my gratitude list early this year. I open the back of my 2025 journal and write seventeen things. Then I pause. I’ll continue later, maybe in a week. Maybe when my heart feels less heavy.

I pick up the 2023 journal again and flip to another page near the end. “CONSECRATION” sits boldly at the top. “I don’t remember writing this”, I whisper to myself. But I read it anyway.

“He’s the only thing I don’t have to restrain myself from.”

“I’m not too much here.”

“Even when I say ‘Enough’, He says ‘Just a little bit more’, and then I find that even ‘more’ is not enough.”

“The more I want Him, He wants me even more.”

“I say I love Him more than words can explain, but He loves me more than minds can imagine, more than hearts can feel.”

“With Him, I can want again and again, and I can have Him again and again, more and more.”

“It’s a weaving of our bodies, souls, and spirits — an intertwining, a stitching, an entanglement.”

“It is the purest bond I have ever known. Like I am in Him and He is in me. Space does not exist between us; there is no in-between.”

“I want Him. This Man — I want to have Him. I must have Him.”

“He says to have Him, I must first give myself. It is the only way.”

“There is so much in me I don’t know yet. He wants that — all I know and all I don’t know.”

“I must protect His presence.”

There’s so much more written in these pages, things my fingers hesitate to type. As I read, memories begin to surface. Scenes of a love affair rise to the top of my mind, playing like a soft, familiar film. Long nights, long hours, wrapped in the presence of a Lover I once knew so fiercely. Time stretched then, elastic and generous, and still it was never enough. I always wanted more.

I remember leaving class hurriedly, like someone with an appointment, a scheduled call with a lover. It was real. I was there. And so was He.

I’ve known something was missing. A quiet ache that has been living in me. We still speak but it’s different now. Relationships evolve, yes. They shift, they deepen, they stretch. But I want what I had. I want what used to be ours. And I know He wants it too. I know because I was there. I remember what it felt like, what it meant to us then, what it still means now.

Back then, there were no questions. It simply was. I didn’t need to ask if I loved Him, I just did. I didn’t need to beg Him to come closer, there was no distance. When I leaned in, He leaned too. Even when it felt like no space remained between us, we still found new ways to fold into each other. New depths. New roads to cover. I know because I was there.

Now, as I type this into my laptop, the air feels colder. The emptiness feels sharper because I once knew a fullness that overflowed. This cold isn’t just weather, it’s emptiness. It’s loneliness.

And yet, this ache feels like a kind of mercy.

Absence can be remedied only after it is felt.
An empty hole can only be filled because it is empty.

I’ve spoken to too many people this year with a similar experience to know that there are hundreds of people out there that can relate to this. I’ve even began to wonder if this is a compulsory Christian experience. lol. Please share in the comments if you ever had an experience like this and how you made it out.

And for every heart that has experienced longing for God, may your thirst be quenched. Thank you for reading!