Lent - just to BE

Every year I give up something for Lent. It may be something as small as coffee (ok, that’s huge for me), or something like negativity. This year I’m giving up people, in a way. Allow me to explain.

I have this need – not all people will understand – to be around people, to always have some human interaction in my environment. In short, 

I fear being alone with myself.

Being alone has never been one of my favorite experiences. I have never been comfortable in solace, listening to the thoughts in my head, without interaction with other human beings – human beings who remind me that I’m alive and part of a world machine, groaning with the weight of expectation and hope and disappointment and resiliency. Sitting at home without distractions and people and tasks, quietly hearing my own heart beating, the birds chirping, the old wood of my house creaking and moaning, or the natural sounds of silence. Listening to the world grow and change around me.

Not that I can’t be by myself ((in a group)) – I can go to the movies and the mall and out to eat all by myself and not feel uncomfortable or uneasy. I can sit, by myself, at the end of a bar and drink a glass of chardonnay and chat to the bartender and the other customers on squeaky stools next to mine. The  Being alone in a crowd is not a problem. Being really alone with myself is the problem. REALLY alone, with no distraction. With no facebook checking or text messaging or phone calls and emails.

From the time I was born, I have never been alone. I was in my father’s house until I grew up and joined the Air Force. I was in a barracks with 45 other girls, then a dorm with just one, then an apartment with a revolving door of comings and goings, with messes to clean up and parties to plan. Then I was with my husband, and our three children joined us, and the chaos continued. When he left me alone, I went back to my mother and my brother and my circle of arms enfolding me in my own loss, and I stayed next to them until I was able to stand on my own feet. Only with the help of those who support me like the dowel rods supporting my orchid with fragile flowers. Then there was [him] and [he] enfolded me in a protective embrace, helping me stand supported until I felt able to reach tentatively into my future again, and I met friends and [they] were my clippy things holding my fragility up on stems too weak to support them.

Now my children are here, sometimes, and sometimes with their dad. They break silence (and pictures) and I know that solace will not find me during their wakefulness. But at night, when they are dreaming lucid dreams of their future and super heroes, I listen. I watch them sleep. I fold laundry and catch up on episodes of The L Word. I watch documentaries, half an eye on my email and facebook and phone.

I feel God has called me to understand other perspectives of him, and experience religions of the world around me, and do this project that I'm doing now. In much the same way, I feel I’m entering a space and time where the silence will speak to me. Where I can hear myself breathe.  And where I can listen to that sound with rapt attention.

Of course, I can’t take a leave of absence from my life, from my work, from my project, from my responsibilities.

But I can take a leave of absence from my distractions, and I can learn to be. Just to be. And just to listen. And just to rest, alone, without the whirl of humans and their emotions and pain and beauty around me, protecting me ((from myself)).

So for Lent, I’m giving up the noise and the lights and the sounds that distract me from feeling my pain and hearing my fear. For Lent, I’m giving up the instant connectedness I get through text and facebook and sitting in a buzz of activity every waking minute. I’m not giving up my friends, or my work, or my writing or my appointments. I’m just giving up those hours, where I turn up everything around me to the pitch that drowns my thoughts.

It should be an interesting 6 weeks!