The Unwelcome Pest
I shouldn’t have checked the news on my phone before bed. The headlines grimly told of the country’s lack of oxygen and the mass cremations that mirror a horror movie. A grown man sobbed like a child to the reporter, desperate to find a hospital bed for his sick mother. The night turned a couple shades darker and I thought I could hear my children crying. Coughing, perhaps. My mind was off the man and onto my five treasures tucked in their beds. I closed my eyelids and worried alone.
The weekends are quiet with COVID restrictions. Everything is closed and the streets are silent, causing my mind to recall afternoons at Grandma’s watching Bonanza with its eerie ghost towns. In our own ghost town, the shops’ metal storefronts are pulled down and people stay inside their cement houses. Loneliness has crept into my home like an unwelcome pest. I tried to resist and hold my chin high, but the creeping isolation and boredom pop up more than I would like.
It’s not too crazy. Times have been worse. This won’t last forever. I say these things to myself when I feel like a robot moving from online language lessons, to bathing kids, to washing produce, to sitting on the couch at night with my husband over a cup of tea and a handful of gummy candies. The next day it repeats. As if mothering little people didn’t already test the limits of boredom at times, COVID has brought things to a whole new level.
The kicker is this. I know there are countless blessings embedded in the paragraph above. The ability to move, the delight of children, and candy for goodness’ sakes. I have a safe home, a loving husband, and the luxury of free time. I hear in the tone of my voice the whine of a child that’s bored with their toys.
This guilt makes things more complicated. Now I’m lonely and the worst. I watch the women across the street lifting bricks on their heads to build a house, while their barefooted babies play in the dirt nearby. I sigh and inwardly slap myself, hoping to awaken from this pathetic despondency. Shame on me.
However, shame seems to accomplish all the wrong things. Does it help anyone or liberate my soul if I sit in a mud puddle and mope? Does this sort of penance pay off?
I am not a fan of this covid-flavored loneliness, yet I am thankful that the Lord says no to condemnation on my behalf. Paul says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
Later on in the chapter, Paul goes so far as to reference the cross and what that means for me now. He says, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)
If you give me all things, then I will take a rich assortment of friends that I can have for dinner in my home, hugging them tightly as they walk in the door. I want enough outings with people I love to make home a welcome refuge again and less of a holding cell.
If Paul wasn’t speaking from prison, after shipwrecks and beatings and what have you, I might believe that this passage means God will give me “all things” as I request them in prayer. However, if Paul’s life is an example at all, then maybe God’s viewpoint of what I need varies from my own.
Loneliness still wriggles its way about my home and heart. When prayer is unattractive, I flop on my bed and google worthless things like the dresses from the 2021 Oscars. I stagger out of my bed, feeling like death, and ask God to forgive my unsuccessful attempts of escape.
In these moments, when shame breathes down my neck, Romans 8:1 comes to life. Undeservingly, in all my foulness, the Spirit of God hears my croak of an apology and breaks the silence. He doesn’t slap me out of my funk or leave me for the birds. He touches me, as he did the leper, prostitute, and every other person aware of their gaping need.
His touch does something supernatural that causes me to want other things. I still crave normal interaction with loved ones, but I long for the fellowship of Jesus more. Although time with others in person brings unique laughter and warmth, the Spirit of God fills me with streams of living water and takes care of my thirst in a forever sort of way.
God sees the people without medical resources, the women across the street who sweat under the weight of poverty, and the way my heart faints from time to time in the oppressive quiet of these strange days in a strange land. In his seeing, He gives. Not like Santa. But like the God that He is. He has plans for this loneliness that are bigger and brighter than my wish list.
I still have a bad habit of collapsing on the bed in a dramatic fashion, hand on my forehead, with a “woe is me” heart. However, the Lord is quick to whisper in my ear of the good he is up to. Instead of condemnation, he lays down next to me. He knows the weight of isolation far better. He then gently lifts my shoulders and tells me to rise as he did to little Tabitha long ago. He breathes life into my death, that I might look like Jesus and not merely like a girl who gets all she wants.