And then. Then, just as I had almost decided to run away, to give up on the hope of love and resign myself to the vague loneliness I had felt all my life…just as fear nearly separated me from the endless possibilities of joining hearts with one very special person…just then, Maggie Argo turned slowly in her seat, and looked right at me. And the world was silent.

Maggie Argo smiled.

Way back then, when I was a little boy still full of wonder, and unafraid to wonder such things, I once asked my grandmother why God made the world, and people along with it.

“God made us,” she said gently, “so that He wouldn’t be alone.”

Her answer satisfied the innocent boy in me then, and, in a place having little to do with theology, satisfies the boy in me still. Having created man, and knowing it to be good, God quickly decided that it was not good enough. We were never meant to be alone; it doesn’t feel right. Perhaps God didn’t like the feeling either.

Maybe this explains, at least a little, why some of us can feel lonely in a room full of people. I have experienced this feeling off and on for as long as I can remember. Now all grown up, I have learned some official-sounding names for this feeling, and I am mostly at peace knowing that I am an addict and have bipolar disorder. By God’s grace I haven’t had a drink or drug in sixteen years, and my depression is mostly under control. I have a wife and two kids who love me, and I love them. There is so much in my life to be thankful for now, because I have known destitution and isolation and an inner emptiness that threatened to kill me. God has been good to me.

At times like Valentine’s Day, though, I can’t help feeling a sort of veiled sorrow. I wonder why God decided to give me my life back, while so many others seem lost… lost within themselves, within the walls of their own sense of unworthiness, their own hopelessness. Maybe it’s because, as a counselor, I work with these people one on one, and stare into their eyes. And they look back into mine. And in these moments I am convicted, day after day. I can never forget. I know who they are. I know how they feel.