On Loneliness

when you don't fit in

photo by Berrnd Dittrich

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Being a geriatric mom (that’s what they call you when you have babies over the age of 35) can be bit lonely.

I remember sitting in the midwife’s office, pregnant with baby #4, thinking how sad it was that my only friends were the nurse and the sonographer. And these (I did not deceive myself about this) were one-sided friendships.

There was a young mom sitting across from me in the waiting room. Though our children were the same age, I could feel the generation gap. She had way more energy, for one thing: reading to her kids, giving them snacks, constantly redirecting them in a sweet voice with a bit of upspeak. Somehow she did all this while texting sixty words a minute. This is why I have no friends, I was thinking. I don’t talk like that. I can’t text that fast.

There was this other time at a playground when my kids were playing in a sandbox, having the time of their lives, and a bunch of young moms were talking loudly about how they would never let their kids play in a sandbox because, apparently, cats like to pee in them.

This is why I don’t have any friends, I thought. I let my kids play in sandboxes.

To my knowledge, my children never contracted toxoplasmosis, and, though they are fond of cats, I see zero crazy cat lady symptoms.So I can pat myself on the back that I stuck to my pro-sandbox ideal, even in the face of indirect ridicule.

However, it can be lonely in an ivory tower.

I never wore a bicycle helmet in my life. We didn’t have “snack time” in school; you had to starve till lunch. I hand-wrote my high school essays with a pen while drinking a 42 cent cup of McDonald’s coffee. I took road trips with no cell phone and no GPS. I wrote letters to my friends through the US mail. And I still own a pile of ancient CDs in cracked and half-missing jewel cases. Etc.

Of course, I adapted. Email, laptop, cellphone, GPS, social media, etc. (Drawing the line at AI). But there was a sense in which I was just humoring society—just going along, like you do when you’re playing with children. You have to wear a feather boa and drink fake tea. Sometime soon, you’ll get back to real life and make dinner and wash the dishes.

But I never get back to real life. I was an anachronism. The world moved on while I stood on the sidelines and watched.

* * *

I don’t feel the loneliness like I did five years ago. God has answered my prayers for friendship and a sense of community, though it took a while.

Looking back from a safe distance, however, I would say that loneliness isn’t such a terrible thing.

In Christendom, we talk a lot about community, so it can be confusing. It can be doubly painful in lonely seasons when community seems scarce.

But those who believe are already part of the community; we belong to Christ and are part of a family, whether or not it has manifested on the playground or at library story time.

Sometimes a community is blinded by its conformity: we are sheep, after all. To be an outsider can be a blessing, and there is likely a reason that God is allowing it.

Though you feel pain, there is a lot of pain that you are spared from.

The blessing in my season of loneliness was the nearness of God.

God has healed my heart in a way that human friendship—and the acceptance I craved-- never could.

It is a sad fact of my humanity that, when I am most satisfied with my life, my circumstances, and myself, I don’t seek God as much as I do when things aren’t perfect, or when I am struggling with some little (or big) ache or pain or unfulfilled longing.

He promises that He is near to the brokenhearted.

He also promises that when we seek Him, we will find Him. Finding Him is always more important than finding the temporal things we desire.

When I look back, I see that He was with me in the midwife’s office, on the playground, on the gray and lonely days. He was with me when I felt lonely or excluded. He was with me when I felt like an outsider.

My sad memories become sweet; they are colored with His presence.