Loneliness creates probably the greatest and most devastating hole in the soul of man. Ever since God made us in his image and declared, "It is not good for man to be alone," we were primed to live in perfect intimacy with him and one another. Ever since Adam sinned and the world tumbled into fall, we were doomed to face the pain of loneliness, isolation, alienation.

There are other pains, to be sure; but all of them result in loneliness. Our sin or the sin of others puts walls, barriers, miles of barren terrible wilderness between us and people and us and God. We exist inside our own little hideaway, hoping and wanting and wishing for someone to see us, someone to love us as we are, someone to exist with so we will not have to be alone.

Some loneliness is simply a result of this broken world. Some of it is by choice. Some of it is a result of the evil done by us or to us.

All of it hurts. All of it ends up the same way: distance.

Even those with close friends or a spouse can end up lonely. Loneliness isn't a disease only the single or exiles catch. Sometimes people have a thousand "friends" but not one of them sees them for who they are. You can be in a crowd, it's often said, and be lonelier than those who are alone.

Of course it was not meant to be. In an ideal world, we'd live with perfect closeness between us and God and our fellow man.

In an imperfect world, loneliness can become a pain that forces us to God. I once had a prophetic word that my loneliness had hemmed me in to God, because I had no one else. Truer word never spoken. But it comes at the price of terrible pain.

In an imperfect world, we seek to assuage the terrible, sucking, horrible, emptiness of isolation in many ways. The things we do numb us to protect us from the pain, whatever they are. It could be drugs, it could be surfing the internet endlessly. It could be reaching out and dialing that number when you know you shouldn't. It could be going out to clubs to seek someone to spend the night with, just for the temporary, deceitful feel of love that leaves us emptier than before. Because facing the barren, naked pain with nothing between it and us is unthinkable, it would destroy us.

We have to learn the hard way to go to God. We have to learn the hard way not to give into the powerful, all-encompassing scream to do whatever it is that will give us a few more minutes of peace, shut up the barking dog for a little while. We have to fight against the undertow that will suck us out to sea, into oblivion and into greater hurt. We have to face it, and cry out to Jesus.

That is not as cliched as it sounds. For I've had to do it. Time and time again, when loneliness bites and gnaws like an animal that will destroy me, I've had to identify it, face it, stare it down, resist its urges, and recognize a time to turn to God. If I ignore it and him, I miss an opportunity to learn his love. If I don't take his hand and walk with him through the valley of the shadow of loneliness, I become a shallower and emptier and colder person.

When I cry out to him, he meets me. When I cry out to him, allow him to wrap his arms around me, ask his Spirit to fill me, he does. It comes at the price of terrible pain, I told you. But the result is worth it. It's intimacy with God. I wouldn't, at this point in my life, choose to go back on all the pain. Even though right at this moment, if I could, I'd dodge and duck the pain I'm feeling.

He knows better. Loneliness is a gift. It's not one I would have chosen, but if I walk alone and it allows me to know him and to love others better, I guess, it's worth it.

I don't normally like to use this blog too much for personal updates, but I realize occasionally it's OK. So here goes, in totally random order:

1. God gave me a dresser. This sounds very silly, but it's true. I went out for a run the other night and walked up my street to cool down. Just a few doors up from me, a very large dresser with two missing handles but four working drawers was sitting on the sidewalk. I immediately pounced on it.

When I first moved here, I didn't have a dresser. Some friends from church kindly gave me one, but it was really too small, though it has worked in the meantime. This one is adequately large, if ugly. To boot, my new housemate needed a dresser, so the old one did just perfectly for her!

2. Financial issues have been proving massively stressful lately. It feels like I'm on a downhill slope, sliding further down, and receiving deathblows along the way (mixed metaphors, I know, but there you are).

I've come to the conclusion that freelancing is not working out right now, despite my best efforts, and have been job-hunting. Much as I hate the regimentation of a 9-to-5, sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and even free spirits need discipline.

The good news is that I have an interview with a job that looks really promising, later this week. I'll keep you posted.

3. I have seen God's provision for others; my new housemate, Sara, who just moved from New Brunswick, got a job within one week. So hooray for jobs!

4. Lots of crazy and wonderful things are happening with the group in Montreal. God seems to be moving and working and bringing things and people together in marvelous ways. My pastor, Chris, will be traveling there in a couple of weeks, along with me and a couple of other people from the church. So I'm looking forward to that.

I think in large part the financial situation is forcing me, again, to trust in God and to cry out to him for what I need. It was getting me seriously depressed, until I felt convicted about that: stress and worry aren't glorifying to God or useful to us. I know he'll come through, quite how remains to be seen; but he has always proven faithful in the past and I have his promise for the future.

One of the highlights of living where I do is the proximity of a Korean supermarket. I shop there fairly often, both for Korean staples and other basics.

The aisles are crowded with Korean people, mixed with the odd Caucasian, and chatter goes on all around in Korean, briefly breaking to English when they have to interact with the white person. The shelves are stocked with all sorts of intriguing delicacies, and it takes all my willpower not to add twice as much as I came for to my shopping cart. I make mental notes of some of the more interesting items and plan to find out what they're used for.

Today I go to buy ingredients for pa jon, Korean pancake. I've read that Koreans usually buy a premade mix of flour and other ingredients to use as the basis, so I slowly scan the aisle where I think it most likely to be. There are bread crumbs, of every variety. Flour. Sugar. English pancake mix. But I don't see the Korean kind.

I wander down the next aisle, till I find a man who works there, marked out by the white cotton gloves he's wearing to protect his hands. "Excuse me," I say. "I want to make pa jon. Where do I find the mix?"

He leads me off confidently, and my hopes go up, until he stops and points at a shelf of pre-made pa jon at the front of the store. "No, no," I say, "I want to make it at home."

"Ah!" he says, finally understanding. He leads me off in another direction. "First, you need vegetables," he says, and I show him my shopping basket full of vegetables, to forestall a trip to the produce section. "Then, you need egg," and we stop to grab a carton. He also puts some imitation crab in my basket, which I later discretely return. Finally, he leads me to the same aisle where I futilely hunted for the pancake mix, and pulls a small package off the shelf, marked with a photo of pa jon. "Kam-samnida," I say, bowing slightly, and with all the needed ingredients, head triumphantly for the checkout.

The girl who's ahead of me in line squeezes behind me to rejoin her shopping, plunking another item on the pile and loosing a stream of rapid Korean in my ear. I turn, surprised, and she laughs and says, "Sorry," in English. There's some debate about something, and the cashier calls out "Un-ni!" An older woman, maybe one of the owners, rushes over and resolves the problem. When it's finally my turn, I proffer my credit card, and the cashier, as they always do, shouts out "Card-" followed by a string of Korean syllables to indicate to the others that a card transaction is going through.

On my way home, I pass a little Korean cafe where my friend Angela and I once ate years ago. Unknown to me at the time, it's nearly across the street from where I live now. I smile at the thought, and go home to put my spoils in the fridge.

Today I got lots of kitty supplies, for free. I walked deep downtown to a building where a couple who foster for the Annex Cat Rescue live, and was met in the lobby by the husband, a pleasant guy called Joel. He took me down to their basement locker, which to my delight was chock-full of all sorts of kitty supplies, mine for the taking.

I walked away with a litterbox, litter scoop, scratching post, food and water dishes (cleverly built into a plastic mat to catch any mess), and cool soft-shell carrying bag for when (if) I have to take her to the vet.

Score!

There are still a few things I have to buy, but those are the main ones and a big financial help.

Afterward I went down to the Eaton Centre to check on a pair of boots I'd tried on a couple of weeks ago. They're now on sale at 50% off, so I figured I'd better grab them before they go. I was waited on by an exceedingly bored gay Asian guy with an affected demeanour that projected, "I don't want to have to talk to you any more than necessary."

While he was ringing up my sale, I suddenly remembered the exceedingly unfriendly and uncommunicative gay Asian guy who'd waited on me in that same store two years ago when I bought my previous pair of winter boots. In a moment of epiphany, I wondered if it was the same guy. And realized it probably was. Life's funny that way.

A few weeks ago, I went to the Toronto Humane Society with the intention of getting a cat. I checked them all out, wrote down the numbers of the ones I liked, and returned home intending to go back and choose one.

However, I started to think about the realities of cat ownership, and it tempered my excitement somewhat. Owning a pet is a big commitment. You are pledging to take care of this animal for the rest of its life, including any medical bills it might incur.

I'm realized I'm just not up for that. For one thing, my life is still unsettled enough that I'm not comfortable taking on the life-long care of a furry dependent. For another, my income is not steady or large enough to make me optimistic about paying vet bills.

So I decided I would volunteer at the Humane Society instead. Then I happened to see a flier for the Annex Cat Rescue, another organization in Toronto that cares for homeless kitties.

Somewhere, my desire to own a cat morphed into a desire to foster one. Fostering works like this: you keep the cat and care for it until someone adopts it. The organization pays medical bills and you cover food and litter. Potential adoptees, after being screened by the organization, visit the cat, and you assess them. You have final say about who the cat goes to.

This seemed like a much better deal to me.

So after sending some email messages and leaving some voicemails, I got a call from a very pleasant lady named Sharon, the foster coordinator for ACR. We had a lovely chat in which she told me all about my potential foster, an "alpha female" named Emerald with "dominance issues". Apparently this means that she hisses and taps you with her paw when you do something she doesn't like. I confess I laughed. I said I thought I could handle this.

Sharon directed me to the online application form. After I'd completed it, she informed me that a "home inspector" would be dropping by to assess the house. She also said that I could visit Emerald at the vet where she is currently boarding, so last night, I did.

Emerald turned out to be a small, longish-haired black cat, who crouched in the back of her cage uncertainly till the vet tech opened the door and I extended my hand to her. She crept forward slowly, sniffed it, I started stroking her, and we were in business. She seemed to enjoy the attention, and eventually began purring.

We were doing fine until I pulled her out and set her on my lap. At that point, loud and continuous muttering and hissing ensued, which increased in volume and intensity as she realized she wasn't being put down. I think part of the problem was that from this vantage point, she could see her next-door neighbour, a handsome white cat, with whom she seemed to have a problem. I held her for a bit while the complaining went on, then finally gently set her back into the cage. The vocalizing didn't stop. She had an awful lot to say, all of it negative. I don't really blame her in that situation.

But I loved her anyway. And today, I had the home inspection visit from a very nice girl called Michelle. She said her report would be positive, so, barring any complications, by the end of this week I may have my kitty!

Well, not my kitty. I need to keep in mind that she's only in my care until she gets adopted. Which hopefully, for her sake, will be soon. However, it will be awfully nice to have a cat around for the first time in years.

I'm still high from an absolutely fabulous weekend at the Newfrontiers Canada leadership conference. We had great worship, great teaching from Chris McLean, Roger Bye, and Joe Crummey, and wonderful fellowship as we prayed for and spent time with one another.

The most exciting bit was our visitors from Montreal. There is a group of young people there who are experiencing a real move of the Holy Spirit. Kids are getting saved, filled with the Holy Spirit, and healed. They're not formed into an official "church" per se, but they meet for worship, prayer and fellowship. God has brought about a connection with Newfrontiers in Canada, with the purpose of encouraging and helping them in whatever ways that we can.

Two of the young people who came from Montreal were guys who have only within the past few weeks been saved and filled with the Holy Spirit. Both quit drugs, alcohol, and smoking. One had been so violent and badly behaved that parents wouldn't allow their children to hang out with him. Now he's passionate about Jesus and they're both growing and radically changed.

I personally feel that God has given me a connection with them and I feel an urge to help them, pray for them, and do whatever I can to support them. I'm deeply grateful for their friendship, prayers, and encouragement to me.

The weekend ended rather spectacularly with a sledding trip to Toronto's Riverdale Park. The weather has been warm lately and many people have been sledding, so the hill is quite slick and icy. Somebody built a jump at the bottom, and several of us hit it, with predictably disastrous results. One guy has his arm in a sling, one girl had the wind knocked out of her, one guy has his back and foot hurt...and I'm sure there are more I haven't heard about.

I hit the jump on my first run, went flying into the air, parted with the sled, did several revolutions in the air, landed on my back, had the sled land on top of me and then bounce off. I felt fine yesterday but today have symptoms of a mild concussion: a quite peculiar feeling. No more sled jumps for me!

I am a klutz.

Yesterday I had to run a number of errands, among them buying a new blender for my roommate, whose blender pitcher I shattered by dropping it on the floor. I returned successfully with a new blender, which hadn't cost too much. Mission accomplished.

I then decided to make a small lunch to tide me over until my evening run. I settled on soft-boiled eggs and toast. I popped my toast into the toaster oven, set the dial, and returned to my computer to keep working till it was done.

Now, I am convinced our toaster oven is haunted by gremlins. It used to be that setting it to five minutes resulted in toast that was slightly done on one side, still cold on the other. Recently, it has been slightly burning toast around the edges when set to that time. However, I set the timer to five minutes.

A few minutes later, I began to smell burning. I returned to the kitchen to check on my toast. What I saw was appalling.

The toaster oven had turned into a mini-fireplace. A large and bright orange flame was slowly feeding off one piece of toast, which had turned into a black cinder. Black smoke was curling out of the cracks of the toaster oven.

I quickly a) grabbed a glass with some water; b) carefully unplugged the toaster; c) gingerly opened the door (which resulted in the flame getting bigger); and d) splashed water on the black cinder. It sizzled, and thankfully, completely extinguished the flame.

The toaster oven had scorch marks all along the inside. I hoped it was unharmed. However, I got up this morning (well, this afternoon really) to find the toaster oven sitting on the floor and an email from my roommate saying that it was dead. She'd tried it and the top element started smoking. Not a good sign.

So now I have to buy a new toaster oven. Perhaps I'll go back to the same place where yesterday I bought the blender.

Finally, I went for my run. I was about a mile from home on my 5-mile loop when my eyes briefly registered an irregular patch on the sidewalk. A millisecond later, my toe registered it; and a millisecond after that, I was lying sprawled and stunned on the cold sidewalk with a great shooting pain in my elbow, which had absorbed the force of the fall.

A man was coming along the sidewalk, so I pulled myself up to a sitting position to try to regain some semblance of dignity. He stopped. "Are you OK?" I looked up into a concerned face surrounded by the hood of a black down jacket.

"I think so," I said. "My elbow hurts, but I think it'll be ok. I'm just going to stay here for a minute."

"Do you want a hand up?"

"That might be a good idea." And he extended a hand and helped me up, then walked off with several admonitions to "take it slowly" and profuse thanks from me.

I walked around for a minute, then started slowly jogging home. The elbow pain had mostly subsided. When I got home I found it was bruised and scraped, but otherwise ok. And thanks to some application of arnica cream, today it doesn't even hurt very much.

Oi. Sometimes I wonder how I make it through life.

Anyone who knows me will know that I have an interest in vintage clothes. OK, never mind, it might more accurately be described as an "obsession".

One of my favourite ways to waste time is to wander into a thrift store and dig through the racks and racks of mostly unappealing and well-worth-tossing garments in search of a gem. Hours of fruitless searching yield only one or two keepers. But when you find and pounce on that fabulous item from an era past, it's all well-worth it.

Travel by Greyhound has consistently provided me some of the most unique experiences of a lifetime. My catalog of bizarre bus trips is long and varied, and I don't think I've ever had a two-way journey in which at least one of the legs wasn't overly complicated and odd.

Yesterday was no exception. It began when my sisters and I arrived at the bus terminal in Rochester, NY, for my journey to Toronto. An SUV marked US Border Patrol was parked outside the station, and as we sat inside waiting, two border control officers walked in, resplendent in army green suits and intimidating sunglasses. When the time came to board the bus, I was one of the last because of saying goodbye to my sisters. When I finally tried to board, a Border Patrol officer was blocking the aisle. "You'll have to wait," he barked, and when I said "OK" and stepped back, he clarified: "No, outside."

I disembarked and joined a group consisting of the jocular driver, a baggage handler, and a smoking black-clad Goth girl with a Jersey accent and shaved and tattooed eyebrows that arched in a bold blue swoop across her forehead. As we waited, one of the border patrol officers escorted a dreadlocked guy off the bus and made him retrieve his baggage: for whatever reason, he wasn't going to be allowed to continue his journey.

The other day, I was talking with my mom on the phone. We chat every week or two, and she fills me in on the family news.

This time, one of her major news items was that my dad had hit a deer with his truck. Thankfully, the damage wasn't severe, just some denting to the grill and a loosening of the front lights.

I couldn't bring myself to ask. But she saved me the trouble.

"He took it to the processor, but we don't know how much meat we'll get out of it. The guy said that it looked pretty much undamaged, but they can't tell till they take the skin off."

Roadkill. As viable food source. Sometimes the wonderful oddity of the life I've come from strikes me.

What struck me even more, though, was the fact that this not only seemed perfectly normal to me, but totally sensible. After all, why pass up an entire deer's worth of meat, simply because it was killed by a truck instead of a bullet?

Makes sense, right?