Dangers of a Deserted Island

By: Krinda Joy Carlson

Intern at Ceitci Demirkova Ministries

I dwelt on a deserted island for a whole year.

There, I ate the same non-substantial diet and endured the constant storms alone. I wasted away a little more each week and though I knew I was weakening, I still chose to live on the island.

I thought I was protecting myself.

You see, this deserted island wasn’t an actual location on the map, it was a spot I created inside where I kept my heart. Isolating my heart was my attempt to keep it safe from others; alone, I didn’t have to be hurt or angered on account people. At first it seemed bliss, but the danger began to show after a short month. My emotions rolled like the seas, and my marooned heart was taking a beating.

The storm was constant:

fears…

and worries…

eroding my island with no one to help me stand strong or escape. Also, as I said, I was wasting away, not only figuratively but literally. I lost my normal joy and hope; I dragged, barely able to get up; I even lost my appetite.

Still, I was determined to live on my little island and would not let the emotions, which threatened to drown me, flow out and dissipate. Nor was I willing to let someone get close enough to the island to rescue my heart. After all, people (more aptly put, the hurts people caused me) were what provoked me to hole up in the first place – no way I was letting them come destroy my “paradise.” I expressed my state of being that year in the following lines:

Surround by a crowd,

mixed and loud.

Yet, on an island alone,

the roar of ocean my groan.

If I was willing to listen to my own words at the time, I would have realized the island was actually the opposite of paradise.

Though I was well liked by this “crowd,” was athletic, a successful student, and had a good life generally, I pushed it all away for a life of loneliness and eventually developed numerous food intolerances, chronic fatigue, and fought despair. Despite extensive testing, doctors were not able to diagnose the cause of my poor health. They weren’t able to because the disease stemmed from my heart. The isolation created a scurvy-like condition both spiritually and physically.

Author Erwin McManus says, “For us to be healthy we must be a part of others.”

We were made to love others.

By me refusing to let my heart off the island to give love to others, I also was not allowing God to reach me across the sea of my raging emotions. The Bible instructs, “Let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves…knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” and “whoever does not love abides in death” (1 John 4:7, John 3:14, NIV).

Therein lay my problem – I abided in death for a year by living without loving as we are commanded to do, and thus cut my connection with God Himself, the very source of vitality and hope I so desperately needed. Therefore, the worse danger to our hearts is not the hurt and pain others inflict upon us, but what we choose to do to our own hearts.

Upon realizing my sickness oozed from the very core of my being, I had to make a choice: would I keep hiding away from society and the pain loving can cause, or would I allow God to rescue me from the deserted island and bring me back to the mainland of LIFE! I can write this today because I chose the latter, and slowly my body, mind, and spirit are all returning to health. By letting my heart open up and love others, and give, and serve, I have opened it up to being loved, being served, and being healed by Jesus. Now, I can testify that a life without giving of ourselves leaves us buried beneath the depths of our own loneliness and emotions.

Today, if you are living on your own deserted island, take a lesson from me and don’t stay an entire year, letting your heart die bit by bit. Choose to emerge from the isolation…choose this moment to love and be loved.