Their faces flickered before me. The ones who I had only met in our video calls, the ones with whom I had stayed up late over a campfire praying a Rosary aloud, the ones whose kids knew mine who begged for another visit, one last nerf gun battle, one last piece of her pie. Some faces lingered, all made me smile.
I prayed my way through each women I would be saying goodbye to.
And each face deserved her own specific praise-laden goodbye, an acknowledgement of the tremendous gift of herself she gave so freely and generously through her storytelling. Yet for this band of sisterhood, I needed to send one group email, hoping for a continuance of the special friendship developed as their editor and encourager, trusting all in His time.
In the pause of my keyboard, I wiped the wet back of my hands over my heart. My nursing toddler shifted his little body next to mine, a long afternoon turned into a short bedtime. A look up to quiet my eyes took in a crowded bookshelf, spilling over with dozens and dozens of hard-bound covers on our hard-earned manuscripts. A candle gift from one writer on the dresser in front of me, an icon from another to its right, a reminder post-it to text my prayer partner at my nightstand drawer.
My world will be very different after this email. And indeed it has. Eight-and-a-half years of helping grow an apostolate, teaching and holding the space for stories, and encouraging women in that community has come to a close for me. A hard discernment, a torn-up heart, and yet somewhere at the bottom of it, a peace had settled, knowing I was being obedient to the clear signs God had placed in the smack-dab of my face.
+ + +
To be alone feels the cruelest fate, solitary confinement the harshest punishment. Especially for an extrovert like me. And like many women working in their homes, with their many small children around them, I experienced the amplification of my need for adult contact over the past dozen years. My work of running a writing team was about a lot more than editing and deadlines and proofreading. It was open-heart surgery for me, a shock of sisterhood and community and experiencing God through them to steady my beats.
The women I met were Jesus to me. The ones I met briefly, the ones I worked daily with, the ones I flowed and then ebbed with. They witnessed to love, to creativity, to suffering well. Their likenesses are tucked in my pocket of spiritual-emotional memory.
But to aloneness I am called for this little desert time. To my cell! To my loud hungry group of children among whom inner stillness is only available through grace. To facing my own hastily patched-over story, to listening to the harpstrung hum of air moving through a room. To being without a band of merry women. To Him.
I’m the fourth of five, I always shared a bedroom with one sister or another until the end of high school, I never wanted to be left out, left alone, left behind. When you’re chasing friendships, sisterhood, busyness because a big hunk of your heart doesn’t want to be left without, Who is already waiting in the stillness, left waiting?
You may be a quality-over-quantity kind of person with a short list of besties, you may be praying impatiently for one good friend, or you may have two villages spilling-out-into-the-streets full. Still we worry and agonize: Who will be with me? Who will be with you? Who will meet my need to love and be loved?
I knew it was time to listen to the call to leave my work and listen for what was next. But I ignored it because I believed I couldn’t leave my writers. I thought I had more to give, serve, do. The truth is, we will always have more to do. The pain of leaving a job, or a relationship, or even a friendship is that it’s often left without closure or the kind we would like. This potential for suffering can’t drive our decision-making (though it does). When it is time, it is time.
The anticipation of the suffering of solitude is worse than the solitude itself.
Maybe no one will be with you.
But in that solitary place, you may also find that the only Person you need, you truly need, is and was and will be with you. He has called me to Himself. And if you put down your phone and listen, very very hard, He is probably calling you to Himself too.
Until next week and in this together,
Nell
Oh Nell, it’s like you can see inside my heart and know what I have gone through for several years now. Solitude. But I have always found Jesus in the solitude and He is all I need. Thank you again for your words this week. God speed.
Thank you for inviting us into a piece of your heart and sharing what detachment looks like (even when it’s fruitful, meaningful, and purposeful). I’ve never met anyone who could authentically dedicate themselves to a group of 40+ women like you. Thank you for being you 💜💜💜💜💜💜.