Making Friends with Loneliness

            I’ve already talked a bit about my ongoing struggle with loneliness.  Over time, I have learned to be content with it, to not fear it so much (for the most part).  In fact, I’ve learned to enjoy it (kind of . . . in general).  And while it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of answer, I want to share with you some keys for learning to be lonely.  And they would probably work for other types of discontentment, too.  So, in no particular order, here they are:

The Lord's Prayer

            “Our Father in Heaven, (if You really are listening and care at all about what’s happening here on earth),

            hallowed be Your name (even though I carelessly say “Oh my G**,” “G** D*** it,” and “J**** C*****” all the time),

God's Missionary

            (Reprinted from my other blog, sweetlybrokengirl.blogspot.com)

            I wish that the message of letting God interrupt our plans was given during more graduation speeches.  I think it’s so important for people to hear, especially as they set out into the great wide open, with all their grand plans about how they are going to use their education.  And since I will probably never be asked to give a graduation speech, I’m going to share the message that I wish I had heard at my graduation. 
            Pretend right now that you are in the audience in your cap and gown.  And you are graduating from the School of Life, where we train you to go out into the “real world” to do great things for God.  And I step up to the microphone, take a deep breath, and deliver the speech that I want to send you off with:

Beautiful Failure

            There’s another big thing that helped me through that “four-month funk.”  Another lesson that I remember every time I walk down our stairs.  And I smile. 

            When we first moved into this house over two years ago, the first purchase we made was new paint.  I had never owned a home before, never been able to pick out wall colors and make a place “my own.”  And I was really looking forward to this project.  But unexpected repairs came up that meant I had to put it off.  And so, two-and-a-half years later, I was thrilled to finally be able to engage in this wonderful right and joy of home-ownership.

Valuable Depression

            I used to think I was a happy-go-lucky, glass-half-full kind of person.  But then I grew up and realized that life is much harder and more unpleasant than I thought it would be.  The drone of every-day housework doesn’t make you feel like you accomplish anything worthwhile.  The lack of friendships makes you feel like you don’t matter.  The constant struggle to pay your bills makes you feel like you can never really rest and simply enjoy life.  It’s always work, and failure, and struggle, and exhaustion, and loneliness.

Bittersweet Loneliness

            I’ll admit something here.  I have always been a lonely person.  I have prayed for deeper friendships, and I have sought to establish strong relationships with others at various times.  But many of these efforts didn’t work, and I still found myself lonely.  And I lamented this for years, feeling like something was wrong with me and like it had to be different for me to be happy.  And this is one big “should” that I have had to face, to give over to the Lord. 

The Dangers of Abundance and Happiness

            I’ve noticed that a popular teaching out there is that because we are the children of the King, we should be living in royal abundance.  And this is an attractive idea because we all want things: more things, better things, impressive things.  We don’t like to do without, to be in need, or to settle for less.

            But this kind of teaching is off-base Biblically, waaaayyyy off-base. 

The Blessings of Daily Bread

            “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”  (Phil. 4:12) 

            As I said, we have never had a lot of money.  We’ve always had “just enough,” sometimes even less.  When the economy tanked, my husband thankfully still had a job, but his hours were cut way back.  We had already been living tightly.  But we had to learn to live even tighter. 

Getting Rid of The "Shoulds"

            We moved into this house over three years ago.  It was a huge answer to prayer because we had been in a two-bedroom rental for 11 years.  But that two-bedroom rental became a one-bedroom for almost a year because of mold problems.  Four kids and two adults in a “one-bedroom” house for a year.  It was bad.  And there was mold on the main level, too, which caused us to close off the whole back area.  (Yes, it made us sick.  And no, no one else but me could smell it, so every time I called the landlord in to check, they decided that it was nothing.) 

            But having no money, we couldn’t just rush out and pick any place that we liked.  We had to desperately pray, and to rely on and wait for God to open the next door.  We didn’t want another rental, to move our stuff more times than we had to.  It was time to find a house to buy.  So the hunt was on for a place that would fit six people and that we could afford on one small income.

The Blessings of Giving Up

            “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”  (Matthew 6:27)

            “We live by faith, not by sight.”  (2 Cor. 5:7)

            What do you do when life falls down around you?  When you find leaky pipes in your basement and need to get your front yard dug up to replace the old lead pipes coming into your house as soon as you can?  For several thousand dollars?  When, try as you might, you can’t get ahead in life because caring for a family of six on one income is very difficult?  When your house has been in “construction mode” for years because you don’t have the money to fix it up and you have to rely on the gracious, free help that you get now and then?  When your family has all moved away, leaving you to feel a little like an orphan?  When they find a brain tumor in your mother-in-law a few days before Thanksgiving . . . and the prognosis doesn’t sound good?  

            What do you do?  I think after years of perfecting my ability to worry, I might have finally found a different answer.