Last week I found myself with some time on my hands and nothing to do. It was that time of day and week when people are working. Mid-day on a Tuesday. Yet I was alone and not working. It was a beautiful summer day but I had no-one to join me and share it with. I decided to get out and drove over to Petworth Park. I wanted to make the most the good weather and have a picnic.
It was hot and I needed shade. Soft grass. A place to drift and dream. So I chose a thick heavy oak tree in an area of natural parkland, threw down a rug, read a book and ate a simple picnic lunch.
The temperature was at least 5 degrees, maybe 10 degrees cooler under the leafy canopy. A soft breeze had set up. I was alone but not lonely. I have learnt to handle this discontent. This desire to go home where I truly belong. This feeling of enjoying and embracing what my life contains right now but knowing that in the future there is so much more. A real place to call home where I belong and others have gone ahead of me to prepare the way.
'Part of this is just the reality that we live in a world fractured by sin, but it's also the truth that we who live in this fractured world have eternity written on our hearts: we are longing to be home and are digging the tent pegs of our lives in as deep as we can get them until we arrive on eternity's shores.' Credit : Lore's blog - SAYABLE
I have so much time on my own and face loneliness every day. I face the conflict of living on earth here and now when my heart and my future is in heaven. But in so many ways I never feel alone. I feel loved and cared for and find companionship all over the place. Just last night I was riding home from work, down a quiet country lane beside a plot of allotments. As I cycled along I noticed a tiny bundle of fur on the tarmac. A quivering wreck, trembling and lonely.
I stopped to take a look, stooped down and peered at this tiny minute creature who looked miserable, lost and suicidal. The tiniest shivering shrew. It was a picture in rejection, shivering with whiskers drooping and snout hung low. I thought it might be sick and waiting for a car to come along and take it out of its misery. "Don't be ridiculous," I said. "Suicide isn't the answer." I placed the palm of my hand over the teeny weeny shivering body and spoke softly to it. I spoke healing over it. I spoke hope over it. It settled under my hand, safe and sheltered. And then when it felt revived enough with a happy squeak it ran off into the grass, alert and alive.
I looked at that shrew and saw in it a picture of loneliness. In the beginning God said it wasn't good for man to be alone. He understands that we all need companionship. Loneliness is a killer.
God says 'He sets the lonely in families.' Psalm 68:6 Be that a natural family or a spiritual family or an adopted family. I am part of at least 3 different families.
But on the day to day I live alone and sometimes find my companionship in nature. That company can come from animals, there is nothing as loyal and faithful as a dog for friendship. I don't have a dog at the moment so have to look elsewhere. I find company in the horses that graze opposite my place.
I went out the other night to hang out with them. It was dusk and a great big full moon was hanging in the sky. I stood by the fence at the side of the field.
The little white pony who looks like a unicorn that has misplaced it's horn, possibly broken it in a play fight, came over first to sniff my hands and nibble on my cardigan. He is jumpy but curious and is always the first over. Next came the huge male bay who is the boss of the three musketeers. He nipped the little one out of the way and came and nuzzled his nose into my neck. He was followed by the quiet brown horse. I haven't given them names yet which is unusual. They will come as I get to know their personalities better.
We stood together, enjoying the light evening breeze that had set up. Me and three horses who are not able to say a word to me. Yet in their solid presence, in their body language there is acceptance.
Animals are good companions but ultimately we need people and we need Him ( Jesus) most of all.
I was visiting my brother this week and he was frustrated and bored. He said he gets so lonely and as he is so obviously better, he doesn't understand why he is still in hospital. We are now playing a waiting game. He is waiting for a space to become available at the specialised Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit in Bristol. Although Simon feels alone. The truth is that he is never alone. He has a nurse assigned to guard him 24/7 because of his memory loss. He cannot be left alone. Physically he is fine. He has put on weight. All infections have cleared up. His blood pressure and temperature are normal.
When I visit we go outside and walk around the hospital grounds. But he complains of feeling abandoned. Feeling left behind. Feeling like he has woken up in a nightmare he can't get out of. He doesn't understand how he came to be in hospital even though we have talked him through the events that happened over and over again.
His heaviness was catching. I was depressed as I drove away. I felt awful leaving him behind and coming home. We have talked about discharging him and having him at home but this is not the right solution for him at the moment. He needs the therapy he is getting and we cannot give him that.
I came home and sat outside pondering Simons' circumstances. This is a difficult period of his recovery because he is so well physically. But as I reflected on his loneliness I knew that his thinking process and these feelings are incorrect. Simon is never alone. A nurse is there. The ward is never empty. He has people around him just a couple of metres away every second of the day. People do make time to stop and chat. He is well known and liked by all the staff. Yet we can all feel lonely. Even in the middle of a crowd. Even in a family. Even in a marriage.
Simon is entertaining a thought that is wrong and we all entertain it to varying degrees.
'You are abandoned. No-one cares. Even God is distant and hasn't rescued you out of this.'
The little lie that we are alone and no-one cares can grow and grow and grow. The truth is that Simon couldn't be more NOT ABANDONED. He is the centre of a huge team of staff and therapists. He is watched over. He is cared for. He is visited. And most of all God has never left his side. Not once during this long ordeal.
" I will never leave you nor forsake you.'' Jesus. Matthew 28:20
So in an attempt to dispel the lie, I wrote these words on a piece of paper and stuck it up on the wall opposite Simons' bed before I left.
On Sunday I listened to Simon Thomas on Radio 2, talking about dealing with the pain of losing his wife to leukaemia within 3 days of diagnosis. The pain of collecting the death certificate and reading the label 'widower' next to his name. The pain of being single again. The pain of feeling let down and abandoned by God. He talked about how angry he was and how one morning he felt like ending the pain and dying. He went outside in a pair of wellington boots and a dressing gown and shouted up at a tree at the end of the garden. "WHY have you left me alone without a wife and Ethan without a Mother? WHERE are you? WHY have you abandoned me?" And it was there that he felt a sense of being held. He sensed how Jesus was actually holding him and carrying him through the pain. It was Jesus who was able to identify because he carried it all for us.
And I feel like that every time I see the wounded Lion statue when I arrive at Bristol hospital. I remember the Lion - Aslan in CS Lewis' famous tale - The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe. Aslan, a picture of Jesus. I feel the empathy of the Lion, Jesus. I feel the closeness of Jesus to Simon. I see how He has never once left him abandoned or alone through this trauma. I see how not only does He understand, He has experienced it for us. He has been broken and wounded. He has been left alone and forsaken by the Father so that we do not need to be.
"My God, My God, Why have You forsaken me?" Matthew 27: 46
And I realise that Simon's feeling of loneliness is just a feeling but it is not a fact. Jesus has always been with him in every moment of what he has been through.
