Movement from Loneliness to Solitude
In order to understand solitude, there was almost a pressing need, an urgency to be so closely acquainted with loneliness, to know loneliness so intimately. And that intimacy was painful. Loneliness was pain. Loneliness inflicted pain. Loneliness fed on pain. For a long time, loneliness was I.
Loneliness looked like an invisible, suffocating bubble that was heavy, thick and impenetrable. Loneliness had a life of its own and often sought to quietly smother life out of its host. It fed on “What’s in it for me?”, “I should always out-give others and avoid receiving if possible.”, “There is a wise saying, you only reveal 3 per cent of yourself to people you meet.”, “Let’s throw a pity-party. Oh look there’s only poor me who is attending…”
Loneliness longed for company but did not know how to keep company. Loneliness constantly engaged in a tug-of-war of pleasing others but not revealing oneself to others. Loneliness attended loud parties where people hid behind beer bottles and important businesses. Loneliness stayed away from friends and family and engaged more than necessary with business associates whom it had a ‘professional’ relationship with. Loneliness sought men who kept company with their own loneliness. Loneliness exchanged sex, soul and bits and pieces of me for company, for the hope of a deep connection…
Loneliness became tired…
In that tiredness, Loneliness buried itself in work, chased away sleep and concocted grand ideas to get involved in ‘meaningful’ endeavours that would further push away family and friends. Loneliness did not know what it was doing, blinded by a deep darkness named desperation. In that desperation, Loneliness roped in ill health and gave itself more reasons to withdraw. In ill health, I became well-acquainted with Loneliness.
One day, I heard my daughter’s Loneliness, from the windows of her soul, she shared with much sadness, “Nobody wants to be my friend.” That sadness woke something in me. On a path filled with beautiful flowers of many different colours and majestic tropical trees, while I walked with her every morning and afternoon to and from school, I prayed for a friend.
Some time later in the same year, somebody invited me to church. In that church service, I found my safe harbour. I docked and received healing. Docking was dangerous, for my family was against my safe harbour. “You are going to change,” they warned in fearful protest. Perhaps I was going to change. But I could only say, time will tell if I would change. That started me on my journey with my true companion.
Life did not look much different for a while, except there was a new activity in my unrelenting schedule, Sunday church service. But something in me had shifted. I only noticed the shift when I was in Singapore’s biggest club, hundreds of people making merry around me. I stood not far from the stage. All of a sudden; it was as if time froze. The music slowed down. I felt the light suddenly became brighter; it was as if time and I stood still on the stage of life. A quiet deafening thought came, “What am I doing here?”. I looked around me, I felt incredibly lonely and out of place. In that club, loneliness and I met eye to eye and I decided I did not need to be there.
I then took further journey physically away from family and friends to places where I did not know anybody and could not speak the local language. There in the strange place, both geographically and emotionally, I moved between loneliness and solitude. The difference is that this time when loneliness called me, my true companion was there with me.
I walked with silence for 3 weeks and dwelt in the place where I watched the incessant need to speak and drew a little closer to solitude. Then some time later, I bathed in solitude for a period of 2 months. Solitude looked like sunshine, sweat, plants and numerous chats with my true companion. Sometimes, the chats were more like songs. Sometimes, the chats had no words. Solitude was sweet and restorative. The bliss was also addictive! But my true companion prevented me from camping on the hill of solitude, for He knows that solitude was there only to accompany me into the embrace of hospitality.
Movement from Relational Defensiveness to Hospitality of Embrace
My father fell sick and my mother turned into somebody else’s embrace before he could pass on. One morning, I woke and walked into my father’s room in my pyjamas, hugging my bolster. There he laid on his bed with glaze over eyes gasping for breath, like a fish out of water. He could not speak anymore. I do not remember his last words to me…
Some weeks after his death, my mother told me I have a cursed life. She told me a fortune-teller had predicted that I would jinx my father to death. I was nine. I can still see the little girl sitting in the left back seat of the car looking out of the window into the dark rainy night, watching the raindrops slide off the window, or was that really just her tears streaming down her little pale thin sunken cheeks.
She cried easily and a lot in school, but she did not and could not express the frustration and desperation of what was going in her big little life. Her teacher scolded her in front of the entire class, “Stop crying crocodile tears!” The teacher also shared her gourmet sandwich from a high-class hotel after she learned of the little girl’s father’s death and that the little girl did not have money or food to eat. But the sandwich although not eaten got wedged in the painful chasm of the little girl’s heart.
The little girl became the matured, beyond her age, sensible girl who took care of her brother and mother. She did not talk much and had few friends. The few friends that she had did not know her pain, her deep dark thoughts. She danced with loneliness and disguised hostility. She was friendly, pleasant and helpful, introverted and quiet. She almost just faded into the background. She was a great listener for as she listened to others’ pain, she seemed not to notice her own.
Hostility ignored and disguised grew. He grew into a huge monster that threatened to devour the little girl. That monster had a name called depression. Hostility and depression looked like incessant thoughts of worthlessness. Hostility looked like nights in the darkest corner of the room, under the table, sobbing only to dry her tears really quickly if there were sounds of movement of any sort outside. Hostility looked like the white sink with blood streaming down it. Hostility looked like a throbbing headache that compelled her to knock her head on the wall to make it go away. Hostility looked like her mother who pushed her away and refused to talk about her beloved father. Hostility looked like marrying a man she could not relate to. Hostility looked like obscene working hours and average two to three hours of sleep a day for years.
Then one day, a little bird told her grandmother that her mother was always working or cleaning and her father was always playing computer games. I looked at the little bird with much apology in my eyes and said, if you ever feel like you need me, tell me “Mommy, five minutes. I promise you, I will put everything down and spend that five minutes with you.”
During that time, I read a book, by Cloud and Townsend, called Boundaries: When to say yes, when to say no to take control of your life. I started to say no. No, was a glimpse to hospitality. Hospitality was saying no to ordering pizza for my husband and telling him, “you can do it yourself.” Hospitality was saying, “If you need the house to be spotlessly clean, do it yourself.” Hospitality was saying, “I can’t do this for you mommy, ask someone else.” I started to get affiliated with hospitality.
Hospitality got acquainted with solitude and they became good friends. Hospitality gradually took a different look. Hospitality looked like a house with many rooms where I learned to receive love freely and open my heart to hurt. Hospitality looks like vulnerability to embrace pain and suffering, my own and his and hers. But always from the house with many rooms where there is abundance of unconditional love. Hospitality is the house with many rooms. Hospitality now lives in me and often dances with hostility.
Movement from Distractions and Drivenness to the embrace of Prayerful Attentiveness
Distraction has many faces. She often has legitimate reasons behind her. She speaks loudly yet pretends to be most sophisticated about her ways. She forgets many important things and remembers many inconsequential things. She has a close relative named Drivenness. Drivenness and Distraction rarely see eye to eye with each other but work perfectly to jostle for my attention.
Distraction looked like that one more dish I need to clean, that one more load of washing I need to wash. Distraction looked really subtle almost docile but she had an appetite capable of devouring days, weeks and months. Distraction looked like one more person I needed to forgive, one more thing I need to get right with God. Distraction dressed herself up often with Later.
Drivenness looked like my daughter’s future. Drivenness looked like a passion for things of God. Drivenness looked like determination. Drivenness looked like an urgent need to move along and get things done. Drivenness was not friendly. Drivenness was not friends with Clarity. Drivenness hated stopping to talk. Drivenness was calculative, obnoxious and proud! Drivenness loved driving around with Stubbornness and Boredom: when Drivenness stopped, Boredom would create a ruckus! Drivenness drove others around me with a bulldozer, razing over whoever was in the way.
Distraction and Drivenness held frequent parties with Fear and Self-righteousness. These were flamboyant pity-parties that excluded everyone else. There was no space for attending to Anger and Sadness. I often sat in the middle of those parties absorbed and overwhelmed by all that was happening around me. I did not have time to attend and listen to what my true companion had to say.
One day, always one day, I was reflecting on The Father Heart of God by Floyd McClung, a thought came to mind. “What is my praying posture? Do I pray from a posture of surrender or do I pray to control my circumstances?” I wondered. Distraction and Drivenness did not have a place in the posture of surrender, as the posture required me to stop and cast my eyes on Jesus and His perfect finished work.
Prayerful attentiveness is turning my eyes onto Jesus. It is not a physical behaviour but a mental focus. Focus is an inadequate description for prayerful attentiveness… Prayerful attentiveness is more than just willing myself to focus on Jesus. It is a wide-open awareness that does not dismiss my circumstances or emotions or responsibilities. It is like having peripheral vision. It is acknowledging Jesus and His broken body at the same time keeping in view all that is happening, and choosing to attend to Jesus and observe what He does to those other things that call my attention. Prayerful attentiveness is like a kind little wise woman that sits in a corner of the house with many rooms, attending to Hospitality, singing, “My peace, my peace, my peace I leave you, my peace I give you, trouble not your heart. My peace, my peace, my peace, I leave you, my peace I give you, be not afraid.” The woman has a name. Her name is Courage.
Movement from Shadow to Unity, Integration and Transparency
In a recent encounter, I journeyed to the edge of a thick darkness, of death with the pilgrim. I was surprised by my reaction to that thick darkness and the shroud. I most skilfully avoided the darkness and, with a dogged determination, drove both myself and the pilgrim toward light. I could not journey with the pilgrim and face the darkness or shroud until it assumed another name.
In that encounter, I have learned that the shadows want acknowledgement, unity, integration and transparency. The shadows would assume other names, shapes and forms so they will be known. I have also learned that Shadow dances with Drivenness and Distraction. And, at times with Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Hostility, Self-righteousness and Fear too.
As I attend to my prayer posture, I became acquainted with the shadow that lurked behind encouraging, coercing my daughter to seek the Lord in prayers. As I attend to comments someone gave about not wanting to feel inferior in front of me, I caught a glimpse of the shadow that struggles with power, rendering power to others in order to control them, helping others in order to assert power over them. As I attended to the boastfulness of an acquaintance, I made friends with the shadow of my own inflated ego. As I attended to my irritation towards stinginess and narrow-mindedness, I saw the shadow of poverty in my heart.
I have almost forgotten to explore what the embrace of Unity, Integration and Transparency is like, and I wonder why?! I cannot help but smile and be curious at what might come out of attending to “Why I almost did not remember”…
Unity, Integration and Transparency are like beautiful sparkling clear streams of water, alive, filled with life. They feed the roots of the tree in my soulscape that is planted by the river of living water. They are not a state to hanker for but a state that I will naturally come to as I attend to my true companion. I would like to explore more about the life within the embrace of Unity, Integration and Transparency. It is not devoid of death, it is not devoid of pain, it is not devoid of suffering. No, instead it gently holds life and death in both its wounded hands. Unity, Integration and Transparency is embodied in the person of Jesus, my true companion.
Conclusion
In this grand ball with many of my shadows and estrangements, I have learned that they bring me gifts much like fertiliser. As I sit and prayerfully attend and play with them (in the house with many rooms), they will be like Josef (Brown, 2012), growing to like me and tell me their stories. And in their stories, I will find treasures - treasures foundational to my formation as a companion both to myself and others.
Here, I shall conclude my essay with my “I rules in Love”.
I lead a bible-based, Christ-centred life, in which I am reminded that I am made in the image of God. And as I journey mindfully with myself and others on the path Abba has set for me, I grow in the likeness of Christ. I embody Christ in the following ways:
I respect myself and others (people, environment – animals and plants) around me. I am established in the righteousness of Christ by faith. I am forgiving towards self and others. I am loving towards self and others. I am generous towards self and others. I am grateful for at least five little things a day. I embrace the truth and hold it lovingly towards self and others.
And all these I endeavour leaning heavily on the bosom of my true companion.
Bibliography
Brown, C. (2013) Study Guide for Reflected Love. Australia : Christian Heritage College.
List of Significant Resources
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Cloud, H. & Townsend, J. S. (1992) Boundaries : When to say yes, when to say no to take control of your life. Michigan : Zondervan.
Cloud, H. & Townsend, J. S. (1998) Boundaries with kids : How healthy choices grow healthy children. Michigan : Zondervan.
Feldhahn, S. (2004) For women only : What you need to know about the inner lives of men. USA : Multnomah Books.
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