"9. There is no single person who can be your everything. Be very careful about bestowing this power on any one person. I suspect you are trying to fill a gnawing loneliness, and if you are you inherited it from me. That feeling, Woolf's 'emptiness about the heart of life,' is just part of the deal. Trying to fill that ache with other people (or with anything else, like food, alcohol, numbing behaviors of a zillion sorts you don't even know of yet) is a lost cause, and nobody will be up to the task. You will feel let down, and, worse, that loneliness will be there no matter what. I'm learning to embrace it, to accept it as part of who I am. I hope to help you do the same."
It's the opposite of what I want Lily to embrace. So, my sweet Lily:
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| (Lily!) |
Yes, there is no single person who can be your everything. And yes, there will be times that loneliness gnaws away at your heart. And yes, absolutely, no person or thing will ever be able to fill that ache, you will feel let down, and at some point you will probably feel that the loneliness will be there no matter what. But my darling girl, please reject with all your heart the thought that you should accept it as a part of who you are.
I know what it is to feel lonely. It starts with a bit of comparison; and then feeling left out, left alone; and then the sadness quietly creeps in. It's seductive, it's tender, it's a sweet heartache full of self-righteousness and self-loathing. It is easy to slip into and beyond difficult to escape. It can be addictive. It is destructive.
Do not embrace it. Flee from it!
I know it can be done, because just as I know the temptation of loneliness and sadness, I also know the freedom and joy of the One who says, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine…. You are precious and honored in my sight, and I love you… Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you…. (I am) close to the brokenhearted and save those who are crushed in spirit… (I) will take great delight in you, (I) will quiet you with my love, (I) will rejoice over you with singing."*
Knowing this frees me to not live in the feeling of loneliness, the feeling of sadness. Rather, this knowledge grants me the ability to content my soul with this love, to dwell in the joy it brings, and to rest in the peace offered to me.
Choosing this is rarely easy. But beloved, it is infinitely worth it.
"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."
~T.S. Eliot
*Isaiah 43:2, 4; Hebrews 13:5; Psalm 34:18; Zephaniah 3:17
