Alone (Not Alone)

I started reading Anne Jackson's blog infrequently probably six months ago, and following it regularly sometime in the last few months.  I've mentioned before that I appreciate her honesty, and her discussion of mental health issues.  You don't find many Christians, and particularly not many with a certain degree of public position who are willing to admit mental health struggles, and as someone who dealt with depression for many years, has family members with fairly extreme mental health struggles, and continues to wrestle with anxiety and panic issues at times, I've appreciated that public discussion - that breaking of the stigma.

Today the title of the post on her blog is "Do You Feel Alone?"  She poses the question, "In what area of your life do you feel most alone?"  The comments have been interesting to read today.

I've spent much of the last two years fairly deliberately secluded.  Partly because my heart was broken.  Partly because my broken heart destroyed my physical health and my destroyed health and limited energy left few options for socialization.  Partly because I was longing for what had been, fighting for it, crying and aching over it.  And finally, because, when I began to see the end, my heart was so shattered that I was terribly afraid to risk opening it again.

I belonged once.  There was a place where my heart fit - where I wasn't strange, and the way my gifts operated complimented the way the gifts of those around me operated.  That place fell apart, for a myriad of reasons, different, I suppose for each person you ask - I certainly have my own thoughts on the matter.

Two years passed, and mostly I hid and waited and cried.

I talked a lot with a very few dear friends, scattered around the country.

And with Jesus.  Actually I did a lot of shouting at Jesus, wondering why I could have something so beautiful one moment, and then have it blown to hell the next.  Maybe what I had became an idol.  I think at times I missed that - that sense of belonging - more than I missed the places Jesus led us.  More than I missed Jesus.

It's only in the last six months that I've begun to again long for community.  Not any longer only the specific community that I had, but simply community.  To again be part of the body of Christ.  To have that thing where there is someone in the same city you can call and ask to pray on a hard day.  Someone to meet for coffee and talk about where Jesus is showing up in the midst of day to day life.

I started attending church again - at least irregularly.  I know, I know, "good" Christians go to church.  (Insert my eye roll, and perhaps a whole dissertation on how exactly church is defined here.) The hiatus I took was maybe one of the most healing things I could have done.  I've spent my whole life in church.  The running joke as a child of a pastor was that the only Sunday that I'd ever missed church was the one I was born on.  (It was pretty close to the truth.)  I'd spent my whole life doing, and performing and being.  And my heart had been shattered.  Over and over.  By Christians. 

The time away was time to heal.  To fall in love again with the Jesus who met me in a dark car four years ago and healed seven years of intense depression in a moment.  The Jesus who cared enough to set up little things.  The Jesus who loved me enough to let at least one really important relationship remain, and grow stronger.  I fell in love with him again, and it began to feel like the most natural longing in the world, as an outpouring of that love, to long again to be in His church, his body.

(It helps, I suppose that in university I studied history, and fell in love with the church - with this institution that had so many faults, but so many glowing moments.)

I've found a house church that I'm pretty sure I'm going to grow to love.  But right now, it is one of the places where I feel most alone.  It's a small group, and they've been together for a while.  I'm the new person, and it's awkward.  That thing where you're the outsider who doesn't know all the little histories and personality quirks that lead to conversations and humor.  I'm also an introvert.  That definitely doesn't help.  I'm not shy, but I find small talk boring, and I can only talk about my job for so long before I want to kill things (I like my job, but I sure don't want to spend my evenings talking about it all the time).  The little familiar moments make me ache inside for two reasons.  The first is that my heart really is longing to again share community, friendships, relationship, with people who love Jesus and are interested in searching out his heart.  The second is that it stirs longings for what I had.

So, for now, I walk this middle ground.  Not quite belonging anywhere.

And perhaps the most encouraging thing in the midst of it is the truth a dear friend reminds me of regularly.  "I am not alone."  I walk with Jesus, with a few friends and a family who love me deeply simply for who I am, and with angels and a whole communion of saints who have gone before.  "Never alone" my friend reminds me.  And, on a night like tonight when I am lonely, that is perhaps the most beautiful reminder possible.

Another thought from Henri Nouwen

Two Kinds of Loneliness

In the spiritual life we have to make a distinction between two kinds of loneliness. In the first loneliness, we are out of touch with God and experience ourselves as anxiously looking for someone or something that can give us a sense of belonging, intimacy, and home. The second loneliness comes from an intimacy with God that is deeper and greater than our feelings and thoughts can capture.

We might think of these two kinds of loneliness as two forms of blindness. The first blindness comes from the absence of light, the second from too much light. The first loneliness we must try to outgrow with faith and hope. The second we must be willing to embrace in love.

Lonely

I find it funny that I can be in a head space where the last thing in the world that I want to do is be around people, and yet feel lonely.

And yet, I'm feeling that tonight. I'm hiding out in my bedroom to avoid the noise and chaos of life with roommates. Particularly the noise and chaos that comes from the constant presence of one roommate's fiancee in our home.

But I'm missing connections with the sorts of friends who truly see my heart. One of those friends phoned me this afternoon with an invitation to join his roommates and himself to hang out by a lake. I had to turn him down due to the need to participate in my family lunch. I wished in so many ways that I could spend some time with them. Spend some time laughing.

Lately I find myself counting down the hours until it's late enough to go to bed legitimately.

This week promises to be unique, starting with an appointment I have tomorrow night. An appointment I'm rather apprehensive about.

And it will be another full week. Which, when I'm feeling tired and lonely, just makes me feel more tired to even think about it. So, I'm trying not to think about it.

About 2.5 hours until I can go to bed.

And then a full week to come.

I'm peopled out, but lonely. Go figure.

Just Be.

I'm going to have a "just be" sort of day today. Or at least I'm going to try for that.

No obsessive worrying about doing. Just be me.

And, to borrow advice from Anne Lamott, I'm going to take it bird by bird.

I'm pretty tired.

And a bit lonely and at loose ends.

I had a long and involved dream about a friend last night. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I think it's mostly just my mind's way of processing a shifting in the relationship. Not necessarily a bad shifting, but one that hurts right now.

I think I'm going to go to the zoo. I need a "hanging out with the gorillas" fix. I love the gorilla exhibit. It is the one place on earth (other than wrapped in a hug from a dear friend who lives far away) where I can go and feel peaceful. It doesn't matter how many or few people are there. It's a peaceful spot, and I visit it often early on Sunday mornings.

And then I think I'm going to come home and make myself pancakes. Which my brain tells me is not a practical idea, given all the other leftovers I have in our fridge. But I kind of really want pancakes. They're sort of a joyful thing for me. So I'll probably make some pancakes.

It's a new day. New week. New month. Praying that 2009 shifts today. That it begins to be better.

Welcome each visitor...

Two quotes and a link. My own thoughts are just not fitting for public consumption. I've laid on the couch for nearly a full day. I'm feeling slightly more rested, and but still deeply sad and exhausted. Tomorrow morning I'll go back to work and start again. This is a season of breaking, of shattering, of wondering if wholeness will ever happen again, and do I really want it anyway? Of evaluating the high costs of various decisions. Of questions and elusive future possibilities. Of silence and oftentimes loneliness (even in the midst of crowds). Of fasting. Of thinking and praying and wondering and waiting. Of agonizing and weeping. Of opening my life to the thousand and one sorrows that surround me, and letting them change things in my heart. Of crying out to God in the desperate hope that he will hear and respond and send peace.

I'm going with my best friend to a panel discussion on genocide - in Rwanda and Darfur - in a few hours. We'll eat together first, and then listen, and once again I'm sure my heart will shatter.

So, two quotes and a link. That's all I can manage for public consumption.

Sara Miles describes a conversation soon after she'd become a Christian, with an old friend, where, as he shared the pain in his life, she recommended he pray. She writes:

"When you told me to pray," Jose would remember later, "it was incredibly earnest. You said prayer was like having this intense, profound longing that you just had to be with. That you put the longing in the hands of God, in a certain way. That it was important to be receptive to the unfulfilled, and not fill it or deny it."

I had to be receptive or go crazy - because even as I kept going to church, the questions raised by the experience only multiplied. Conversion was turning out to be quite far from the greeting-card moment promised by televangelists, when Jesus steps into your life, personally saves you, and becomes your lucky charm forever. Instead, it was socially and politically awkward, as well as profoundly confusing. I wasn't struck with any sudden conviction that I now understood the "truth." If anything, I was just crabbier, lonelier, and more destabilized.
(Sara Miles, "Take This Bread", pg. 70)

The poet Rumi writes:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meannness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for
some new delight.

I first came across that poem a few years back, as the inspiration for this story, "The Crowded House".

To be receptive to the unfulfilled spaces and not fill or deny them, and to welcome each visitor, even if they're a crowd of sorrows. This is the space I am working to occupy.

Encouraging

I know it's only 9:30 am, but I am having a difficult day. That could be because of some stuff I carried into the night with me last night - ultimately meaning I probably only slept for two or three of the six or so hours I lay there with my lights out. I say probably because much of that night was spent in the inbetween place of waking and dreaming - flashes of images, people, ideas.

I forced myself out of bed, feeling exhausted, and ill. My muscles tense, my head aching, my stomach rebelling yet again against my very existence. Tears are burning behind my eyes. Tears of frustration and exhaustion and confusion and fear. I sent a quick note to a friend I'd been talking with last night - to tell her that I'd slept poorly, that I was hoping for the grace and strength to make it through the day.

I headed out into the cold morning. It's that time of year when it's beginning to be dark when I leave home in the morning, and it's dark once again by the time I return in the evening. Jason Upton's "Trusting the Angels" album playing on my ipod, and I'm clinging to the song "Not Alone" - desperately needing to hear it's truth.

Got to work and found a response from the friend I'd sent the note to. Tears in my eyes again. I needed to hear the words she said this morning. They eased the aching loneliness of my heart just a little. I wrote back thanking her, and telling her that I'd just been thinking that I could use a hug, but was certain that if someone actually gave me one I'd shatter into a million pieces.

Made tea and Caught up on my blog reading. Faye has a new post up. A beautifully written piece. Her writing reminds me of Anne Lamott sometimes - rambling and deep. She mentioned me briefly - a moment we had together on the weekend. And it encouraged my heart again.

Thanks, Jesus, for friends who love me. Thanks for words spoken and prayed over the lives of others. Thanks for going with me. Thanks for passion tea, and that Wednesday (however miserable) means there are only a few days left before the weekend.