Be Lonely Well

Attribution.

Last week I was, entirely unreasonably, upset with my best friend.

She lives twelve hours away from me, so with the exception of twice-yearly visits, we communicate by phone. It's been a busy summer for both of us, so we haven't talked much. Last weekend I decided to try to set up a phone date with her, and texted "What about Saturday?" But I was too late, she was already doing something with her family.

I felt unloved, forgotten. Never mind that she'd tried to call me the week before. Never mind that the only reason we couldn't talk on Sunday we because I had plans. I still felt forgotten.

Was I being dumb? Yes. But missing my friend, and our heart-to-hearts, did get me started thinking. As I mentioned in one of my first posts, one of the things that interested me about Singled Out was that the authors downplayed the popular refrain of "being content" in our singleness, saying that actual loneliness is a normal part of single life, urging us to deal with it.

As I worked through my own stupid disappointment about missing my friend's call, I had an idea about how we deal with loneliness: I wonder if the key to loneliness is this: Don't shrug it off. Accept it. Be lonely. And learn how to be lonely well.

Psalm 73 (perhaps my favourite passage in Scripture) came to mind:

Whom have I in heaven but You?
And there is none upon the earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

Yes, the overall tenor of this passage is optimistic, hopeful; the psalmist is clearly trusting in God. But there's more to the passage than simply a hopeful message of trust in God. The entire point of Psalm 73 is to reconcile the goodness of God with the "prosperity of the wicked" and (presumably) the sufferings of those who are good, and while the psalmist eventually comes to terms with this injustice, he never denies that it exists.

More importantly, even this passage, the few verses that I've quoted, indicate that we need to read more into this psalm than simple, straightforward hope. To ask, as the psalmist does, "Whom have I in heaven besides You?" is to admit that whatever comfort human company offers is, ultimately, not enough; to anticipate the presence of God in heaven, endlessly, is to imply that human company has an end, an end which may well come much sooner than the end of our lives on earth and which indeed may come again and again throughout our experience. A friend is busy with her family, my own family is busy with VBS or work and unreachable for a week or two, I need a hug at 1.00 AM but everyone is asleep: All these are the nooks and crannies of human life where companionship finds an end, and we are left alone. There, where human companionship ends, is the place where God awaits me.

There is an important point here, but before I get there, one more note: To expect God waiting for us at the place where human company ends is not to shrug off the very real pain of loneliness. The psalmist does not pretend to be emotionally okay in this psalm, not even in its end. Even when anticipating the joys and comforts of God's presence, he admits, "My flesh and my heart my fail." Usually we read this as the poet's anticipation of coming physical death. But the passage does not read only, "My flesh may fail." It reads," my flesh and heart," suggesting that what is described is an emotional failing or even a spiritual one, a faltering of all that makes us us. Left alone, confronted with evil, the psalmist is shaken to the core, and though he leans on God, that does not make him feel better.

Since the goal is not to feel better, then what should we do in our loneliness? I think my earlier point, that God meets us when human company ends, supplies the answer: To be lonely is a reminder to us, married or single, to seek out God. Will we feel happy when we find him? Not necessarily, but we will find him. 

Practically, and speaking from my own experience, I think our seeking of God crowds out other, less productive outcomes of loneliness. When I am lonely, I tend to blame my friends and family who were not there for me. This takes the form of complaints, usually rather stupid ones: "Why," I ask my friend, "can you not ignore your family to focus on me?" or "Why," I say, "must my family get involved in VBS, so I cannot talk to them just for this one week?" Such complaints are obviously wholly unproductive. Besides being just plain dumb, they convince me that all problems are about me, that I am the most important person, and they generate nonsensical frustration with the people that care about me the most. Yet if I remember, when human company ends, that this is natural and look about for God, I will spend less time complaining, even if the loneliness does not go away.

When we are properly lonely and looking about for God, I also think we are more likely to reach out to others. This is perhaps ironic: At the very moment I realize human companionship has an end I go to find more human companionship. This has to do with the purpose for which a thing is created: a spoon is created for scooping, not cutting. If I expect it to cut, I will not only get frustrated, I will likely throw it away and give up the whole endeavor of chopping up potatoes and radishes and celery for a salad. But if recognize that the spoon is meant to scoop, I may enjoy a bowl of ice cream.

The same thing for friends: As long as I am expecting friends to do something they cannot do, provide companionship endlessly, I will be frustrated. But when I expect friendship to be what friendship is, limited human company, a shadow of our relationship with God, I can most thoroughly enjoy friendship. I will no longer spend my energies looking for the perfect friend. I will no longer be sunk in despair when friends fall short of my expectations. I will be willing to reach out to others, to show them love and companionship, since I have no excessive, unrealistic hopes for the relationship.

Since we're human, it's a mistake to assume that if we're resting in God, that human emotions like loneliness will disappear altogether. Being lonely is part of beingWe Christians are not called to not be human, we are called to be humans after God's own image, and part of that means being lonely in a way that draws out the image of God in us, being lonely well, in the way that Christ was lonely. 

Friends will not always be there for us, no. We will not always be happy to be alone, no. But we can be lonely well, joyfully discovering God and others even in the middle of our loneliness.