Solitude, Loneliness, and the Void Only God Can Fill

It’s normal and perfectly human to want someone who you can be open and honest with, who for the most part understands who you are, and loves you just the way you are while still encouraging you to grow.
  
I think God puts in us a desire to be known and accepted and to want to know others so that we reach out to people and thereby learn how to love and be loved, which helps us experience in a tangible way God’s love for us. We need times of solitude and quiet prayer to come to a deeper awareness of who we are and who God is. It can be during those times that we are also most aware of a void in us.

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it. –Thomas Merton

In my experience, there isn’t another person out there whose company will fill the entire void each of us has; only God can do that. Through family, friends, and the relationships formed within the guidelines for a particular vocation, whether it be to the life of someone who is single, dating, married, a consecrated, celibate religious…God gives us a good portion of what we need to have when it comes to human companionship. Beyond that, I believe He leaves a space in us that craves an intimacy deeper than can occur with another person on earth. He allows a place in us to remain that only He can fill.

“Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.” –St. Augustine

My husband Kevin and I love each other very deeply and we know each other better than anyone else knows us, yet I’m certain I don’t fulfill all of his needs for friendship and companionship nor does he fill all of mine. I believe God intends for us to be as close as two people can become and share a level of intimacy with one another that’s deeper than what is reached in any other of our relationships, but I don’t think He’s ever intended for one person to be everything another person wants or needs intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.
  
No person, addiction, experience, or thing can take away loneliness or satisfy all of our wants and needs…only God can fill the emptiness inside completely, and while on earth we’re usually left feeling a lack inside, however large or small, because we aren’t completely one with God this side of heaven.
  
Sometimes when we feel really lonely we seek out others and don’t choose as wisely as we might at other times when we aren’t as desperate for companionship.
  
From time to time we need to sort through things and surround ourselves with good, honest, holy, people who will help us work through our baggage and encourage us to grow and move forward. We need to be very careful to seek God’s will.
  
Even the perfect married couple (Mary and Joseph), truly soul-mates, God led to go visit Elizabeth and Zechariah while Mary and Elizabeth were both pregnant. We often seek out kindred spirits, people who have gone through what we’re going through and can answer questions or at least let us know we’re not the only one who’s had the same challenges. Before Jesus started His public ministry, it was often seeing how others responded to Him that led Mary and Joseph to an even deeper awareness of who He was and is.
  
As the title of Thomas Merton’s book suggests no man is an island. No friendship, religious vocation, or marriage is meant to be an island, either. Some are called to the contemplative life and a few are even called to live in utter solitude, yet they must still rely on others for some aspect of their lives, whether it be food, shelter, medical attention, Reconciliation, the Holy Eucharist …something.
  
Each person is so complex, it takes a number of people, made up of family and friends to understand, accept, affirm, and bring out different aspects of who we are and who God wants us to become. We benefit from having close friendships with people who love and care for us, and somehow give us a glimpse of God’s love as it reaches us and moves in and through us.
  
Lord, thank You for the cloud of witnesses You have put in my life to help me grow closer to You. Please help me become a better witness to others of Your unconditional love. Remove any selfishness, pride, or ignorance that’s in the way of the Holy Spirit working freely in and through me. Amen.

A Cloud of Witnesses

Last Friday evening a woman named Shirley gave a wonderful witness talk about her “cloud of witnesses,” the people in her life who have helped her have hope and persevere in her walk with the Lord.

She talked about how her devout Baptist mother would read the Bible every day, fed the hungry, and worked hard in a war factory to provide for their family once her husband had passed away. Shirley went on to describe friends of hers past and present who had helped her learn what it means to be a Christian. She even named some people in the room whom she counted as part of her cloud of witnesses.
 
This got me thinking about my own cloud of witnesses. There are far too many to count, but the most prominent ones while growing up and now have been my mom, Grandma, my dad, and my nana. Each of these people has given me a glimpse of God’s unconditional love. They’ve taught me about faith, prayer, hope, selflessness, compassion, forgiveness, and perseverance.
   
My cloud of witnesses has grown considerably over the years. Kevin, my aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, Godparents, priests, religious education teachers, spiritual directors, youth ministers, chaplains, campus ministers, classmates, roommates, and countless friends make up my cloud. Some of the witnesses I still see regularly, such as my family, my prayer group, and my Cursillo brothers and sisters. Other witnesses come to mind from time to time, though it’s been years since I’ve seen or heard from them. A story they once told me or something I heard or observed about their faith and spirituality resurfaces and gives me pause.
   
Certainly the many children I’ve taken care of and a number of the people I’ve worked with and for over the years have joined my cloud of witnesses, taught me about different facets of God and His love.
  
I find it very encouraging that there are more people in my life who have been Christ-like than I am able to count. It gives me hope to think that I might also be considered as part of other people’s cloud of witnesses. After all, that’s what God calls us to be: witnesses of His love, mercy, and compassion.
   
We need people to show us how to pray and encourage us to grow closer to the Lord. Sometimes we stumble or lose sight of the Son, and our witnesses are there to lift us up in prayer, surround us with love, dry our tears, and help us continue on.
  
Lord, thank You for blessing me with a cloud of witnesses who have helped draw me closer to You. Please remove anything in me that is keeping me from being a holy sanctuary where You can reside and where others may take refuge. Make me the witness You want me to be. Amen.

WWJD? Love Them (and us) Anyway

    

     Doing the right thing can be difficult when the opposition seems overwhelming, when people start to belittle or threaten, interrogate and intimidate, express anger and outrage, but we are called to do God’s will anyway. We are also called to love those who persecute us.

I Can Almost See You

     For the past three days, my life's been only a blur.  It’s amazing how much it bothers me not to be able to see things clearly that are beyond a foot or two away from me.  Kevin’s finding it fun, because he makes silly faces at me from different distances to find out how far away I can see facial expressions.
I can’t wear contacts while using the eye drops to treat my suspected case of pink eye, so I’m reduced to wearing my very outdated pair of glasses, with a prescription that’s at least eleven years old. I get new contacts every year because my vision keeps getting worse, but I haven’t bothered getting new glasses in years since I only wear them for a short amount of time in the morning and evening.
     I’m reminded of the end of my fall semester studying abroad in Paris. I wasn’t feeling well, so I wore my glasses to school to take my final exams, because I intended to go directly home and back to bed afterwards. It was very strange walking the streets of Paris with blurred vision. Even more of a challenge was taking my art history exam, which included writing about paintings that were put up on the projector. The Impressionist paintings looked even more impressionistic under the circumstances.
     The memory of taking that exam made me think of Monet, who painted the same bridge in his garden in different seasons of the year and of his life. As his eyesight declined, his portrayal of the same scenery got darker and more abstract. Seeing his masterpieces up-close changed the way I saw his artistic technique, and deepened my appreciation of the complexity within. The below poem is one I wrote after a personal encounter with his masterpieces while I was studying abroad in Paris.


Monet in Musée Marmatton


He let fog get in front of the train
heading for a blooming countryside
where a blurry couple with umbrellas
smear into a moving field
of wild flowers and tall grass.

They tell me he’s famous
for what the French call clair-obscur.
They’re wrong. I can tell
it’s more about colors. I’m sure
he liked reflections made
in something resembling water,

But he wasn’t always accurate—
unless that haystack’s reflection is
supposed to be a blood orange
volcano erupting in the distance
without the more traditional assistance
of its black counterparts.

He mixed colors on the canvas
instead of the palette,
put splashes of swatches
in places you wouldn’t expect at all.

He probably picked
an almost finished painting
and wiped his dirty brush on it.
Why else would he add such strands
and globs of violet, brown, maroon?

Now, if you removed them
you would have to change
billions of postcards, art books,
critiques, and art movements.

     In many ways, the growing darkness and abstraction that marked Monet’s later works mirror the same effects sin has on the soul. Sinfulness clouds our vision of what is pure, holy, good, and true. It makes everything appear darker the deeper into it we sink. Each time we move further into the gray area, the slow-moving wisp of a nimbus cloud casts a shadow over a section of our soul, obscuring it from the light of the Son.
     We may not even notice the shadow at first, or if we are aware of it, we downplay it’s significance. The spot isn’t that big or that dark, we rationalize. There’s still more light than dark areas.
     Pretty soon a dense, dark cumulous cloud heavy with salty drops has formed. We’ve sailed to the bottom of sin’s slippery slope, and now the light shining through is only as big as the first spot of darkness once was.
     We begin to crave the light. We come to the point at which we’re willing to wade back through the darkness, looking at it with new eyes, own up to what we’ve done, ask and receive the forgiveness which God’s been waiting to give us.
     Lord, when our vision of light, love, and holiness becomes blurry or dark, please open our minds and hearts to Your spiritual cleansing, so that we may once again become beacons of light for others thrashing and crashing in the waves of life. Amen.

Honoring Our Dearly Departed Loved Ones

This evening I went to a moving service for All Souls Day. We sang/prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, wrote the names of our loved ones in the book of the dead, and lit a candle for each of them. We were given the opportunity to get up and tell a story if we wanted.

   
I had several names to write in the book this year, those of relatives who have been on my mind more often since my dad passed away, that of a friend, and one of a neighbor. I thought of more people I could have added after I returned to my seat.

   
I got up to talk about my dad. I shared that I was very grateful that God had given me so much time with him during the last couple years of his life. I was and still am amazed by the physical and emotional suffering he went through while still holding onto his faith and caring about our family. I feel very blessed to know that he had moved beyond the fear of dying, that he was finally ready to go to God the night he passed away.
   
I had given my dad a book to read a month or so before he died. I was hesitant at first about how he would take it, since the author had suffered so much at such a young age and had prayed fervently to be healed, and the physical healing she begged for didn’t come. Fortunately, A Step Further by Joni Eareckson Tada  & Steve Estes offered my dad hope in the days leading up to his death.
   
On July 25, 2009, Kevin and I spent my dad’s last birthday with him. As one of his birthday gifts, I gave him a Footprints prayer journal with the following message written inside:

Dear Dad,

     I remember you talking about a Footprints poster you’d seen framed in Dave’s office. I hope you will use this journal to write about your walk with the Lord, both when you walk side by side and those times when He’s been carrying you, leaving only one set of footprints in the sand.

     I’ve found more encouragement and hope than you know in your persistence in the midst of adversity to serve God and remain faithful to Him. God’s strength shines through our weaknesses and His love, if we accept it though we don’t merit it, will cast out our fear of failure, the future, and despair.

     I love you, Dad, and hope you become increasingly aware of how much God loves you.
Love, hugs, and prayers, Trisha

Dad wrote eleven entries in the journal but I was quickly drawn to the one piece of scrap paper he tucked in the front on which he’d written:

-Reach out – put others first before our own issues

-give and it will be given to you

-Don’t compare to people who have it better – leads to self-pity robs job and dishonors God

-If I get tired of being sick or of life, God will allow me to mount up with wings like an eagle until the day I get a new body.  -> Hope and faith

I have felt my dad’s presence many times, definitely at Mass, in church, and while praying at the 40 Days for Life vigil, which he did so much to promote over the past couple years.

   
One thing I reminded everyone at the service is that more people are praying for them than they know. 

   
Lord, bless all who mourn with the comfort only You can provide.  Show us how to love and support those who are grieving in ways that will bring them closer to You.  Thank You for the healing presence You give us in faith communities that are centered on love, service, and sacraments. Amen.