bashful

Jesus didn't have many friends and I think Paul's personality might have been a little rash for social graces. Moses wandered around the wilderness, followed by bodies but rarely hearts and Elijah found solace in a stone cave. It took the gross discomfort of a fish's belly to bring Jonah to his senses and Peter was indeed the only one to step off the boat. All the important spiritual awakenings happened in utter aloneness - by abiding in a place where all else faded and where even whispers could be heard and understood clearly.

But knowing all of that doesn’t make the aching loneliness, when it comes, any easier. It rears its ugly head often when we step into unknown places, meet new challenges, function in different circumstances and live single-mindedly – in the wrong direction.

I’ve always battled loneliness, an introvert by nature and a lover of alone time by default. By battling I don’t mean fought against, I mean I recognized it as being a snare I easily succumbed to and the confines of which suffocated me before I knew it.

A few days ago it suffocated me again. I found myself weeping on the kitchen floor of our small apartment; the linoleum comforting to my hot forehead and the silence and darkness of the room aiding my selfish cries. One might ask how this could happen to me, I’m a college leader, an A student, a good daughter and friend, a successful employee and a clean housekeeper. I do what needs to be done and keep a small circle of perfect friends. I’m fine, I tell people. I’m fine, I tell myself. No, no, really, I’m fine. I enjoy being alone. I enjoy the solace of the library and staying home when the rest go out for late night pizza. I like being pegged as the introvert of the crowd; it’s a good identity to have: you never feel left out, you never have to bite your tongue, you certainly don’t have relationship problems and no one would ever think of gossiping around you. It’s a fairly good life.

Until the kitchen floor is your only companion.

Elisabeth Elliot, in her book, “The Path of Loneliness” says this, “Loneliness is much worse than being stuck in a traffic jam or having to do without cheesecake. Perhaps we hardly think of its calling for courage, because we hardly think of it as real suffering, yet it fits the simplest definition I know: having what you don’t want, or wanting what you don’t have. Loneliness we don’t want. It comes from wanting what we don’t have.”

Loneliness comes from wanting what we don’t have. Whether we don’t have it because we don’t want it is beside the point. We still want something to fill the gap left by insufficiencies in our lives. We are taught that loneliness is, like the flu or a common cold, something to be avoided; inevitable, but avoided at all costs. It looks like a black abyss of hopelessness and a pitfall into depression. STAY AWAY FROM IT.

And yet, as I sat there the other night, while my friends ate Italian food at Sergies and I stayed home by choice, my wet cheek leaning up again the tiled wall, I realized for the first real time that this loneliness was not the abyss I’d always thought it was. This loneliness had a point, a purpose. This loneliness was my humanity telling me I had a lack. I had a lack which could not be filled with the things we humans fill our lacks with, friends, money, matrimony, success, even some good things. I shut my eyes tightly and recognized that the insistent hole inside of me could only be filled with one thing: The beauty and wonder of the gospel afresh.

See, I can stand and raise my hands on Sunday, pray with the weakest on Wednesday night, email encouraging notes to the shy girl in the back, and forget the gospel has the power to save me every moment all over again. I hadn’t lost my salvation, I had only, in my belief that loneliness was the byproduct of my melancholic nature, forgotten it. Salvation is where we begin our journey back into the constant communion that is the right of a child of God, and relationships are where that communion is manifested. The people around us are not tools for us to practice our Christianity on, side pieces in the puzzle of Christlikeness, instead they are the barometer we gauge our relationship with the Lord against.

Being alone and liking it has its advantages, but, when it has all been said and done, relationships are where we are stretched and grown. Jesus left the garden of Gethsemane and Peter had miracles to do. Elijah finally allowed the whisper to interrupt his self-made monastery and David sought out his best friend for refuge. There is strength in numbers, I’m learning, even if they begin with only three elements: Me, God and the kitchen floor.

november 2004