"Show me the meaning of being lonely..."

"Show me the meaning of being lonely
Is this the feeling I need to walk with
Tell me why I can't be there where you are
There's something missing in my heart..."
- The Backstreet Boys

It was the fall of 2000, and Hannah was dancing competitively with "the Conservatory."  As much as I didn't like some aspects of competitive dancing...obsessive moms, makeup on pre-teens, being surrounded by dance teams with costumes that were barely appropriate (thank you, Katie Sue for always putting our girls in tastefully designed outfits that covered what needed to be covered)...I loved the comraderie I saw as the girls worked together as a cohesive team.

Hannah, Kelsey, and Megan were the Three Musketeers.  Kelsey was the girl with the perfect dancer's body...long, lean, flexible, and fluid.  Megan was the showman...charismatic on stage, a smile that stopped time, and an incredible sense of rhythm.  Hannah was the blue-collar dancer...hardworking, precise, relentlessly demanding of herself, rigorous in perfecting her steps, turns, and leaps.  They were lovely and funny, and as a threesome they were a force to be reckoned with.  Within the larger company of a dozen or more extremely talented dancers, they were unstoppable..pure beauty in motion!  At least to their biggest fans...us, their parents.

On a typical competition weekend one of the moms would drive Hannah, Kelsey, and Megan to Denver on Friday night and check into a hotel room. The other two moms would join them on Saturday, just in time for their first performance.  Friday nights in the hotel were full of orange-dusted Doritos fingers, root beer, popcorn, and bags full of food from McDonald's.  Once in the crowded hotel room, costumes were hung in the bathroom to steam while the girls showered, and moms organized curling irons, mascara, tights, and leotards. 

Saturdays and Sundays were peppered with running between marked off dressing areas in ballrooms and the performance hall, endless bottles of Gatorade, and hundreds of giggling girls in spandex and sequins.

I loved my fellow dance parents.  Laurie, Jane, Lynn, Kendall, Linda, and about a dozen other moms and dads.  We knew eachother's daughters so well we could order their sandwiches from Subway without asking "what do you want on it".

We were having so much fun, just being together, that it didn't really matter what happened once they got on stage. We were going to cheer them on while they performed, when they faltered we'd encourage them to realize that they had given it their all, and on the drive home, help them remember that the next time they would do better because of all they'd learned.   Little did I know that autumn, that by February our family would have moved a thousand miles away and although Hannah would fly home, on weekends, for the rest of the competitive season, I would never again spend another Saturday in a Holiday Inn near Denver International Airport watching a seemingly endless number of dance routines, set to the music of the Backstreet Boys, Madonna, 'NSynch, Cyndi Lauper, or my favorite that season, Sarah McLaughlin's "I will Remember You."

Our family's relocation to the midwest, far away from all things fun and familiar was only the beginning of my lesson in learning" the meaing of being lonely". During the next few years, I would face one instance after another  when the "ties that bind" were gently being untied, and my little boat was being pushed away from the dock and out into open water...times when I was absolutely sure I was would just drift helplessly into the dark sea of despair. 

During the most lonely of these times, I often recalled one particularly sweet afternoon from those dance competition days.  Hannah and I had driven to Denver by ourselves, so that we could enjoy a short visit with my sister and brother-in-law, her aunt and uncle.  We'd had a fun dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant and were on our way back to the hotel listening to the Backstreet Boys CD, "Millenium" which includes "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely."  Since Hannah was learning American Sign Launguage at the university Laboratory School she attended, and I was a fluent signer, we were singing with our hands, as well as our voices...trying to remember the right sign for each word or phrase.   I loved signing to music and watching Hannah's hands move from word to word, was like seeing her dance in a new way.

I remember thinking that the word "lonely" was not only a sad word, but a sad sign.  A forward extended circle made with the index finger from the lips down, out, and around, returning to it original position in front of the lips.  The sign itself is supposed to be accompanied by a somewhat somber facial expression.  There was a sobering silence in that sign.  It was the opposite of our somewhat raucous weekend with our dance family.  It seemed incongrous in the context of all the giggling, cheering, whistling, singing that seemed to fill our weekend.   Where did "loneliness" fit within the cacophonous sea of 18 girls (age 11 - 18) getting dressed at the same time.  By Sunday, I was often unsure if my hearing was still intact...but never suffering from loneliness.  To see my daughter singing this song in the midst of such an exuberant weekend was unsettling in some ways. In hindsight, it felt like the hand of prophecy pointing towards the next bend in the road on my spiritual journey

And it was always...every time I heard it...that line, "Is this the feeling I need to walk with" that seemed to make my heart stammer.  How could any boy-band sing about the need to walk with the feeling of loneliness?   It wasn't a concept I was looking for the opportunity to ponder deeply during that weekend of frolic and friendship, but it kept poking at me.  And to be honest,  I couldn't imagine the strength it took to actually embrace it.

In the coming months that phrase started to haunt my steps.  It was almost as if I knew what was coming.  I would hear it and my hands would start to feel as if they were dissolving in front of me as I felt myself begin to sign the words without meaning to.  My days of walking in the space of loneliness were about to begin.

In referring to Jesus' time following the crucifixion, while in the sepulchre, Mary Baker Eddy  states in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The lonely precincts of the tomb gave Jesus a refuge from his foes, a place in which to solve the great problem of being."

Soon many of the friendships I'd held dear seemed to fall away. It was a  particularly challenging period of spiritual discovery.  A time of self-examination and of being fully engaged in crucifying a false sense of my self, my ego, and all the ways that it seemed to define my expereince.  Surprisingly,  I found myself holding onto this particular statement  from Science and Health for encouragement...and hope.  And I would sometimes catch myself signing the words to the above verse of "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely" to myself in the dark before I fell asleep.  I often signed the Lord's Prayer, or the 23rd Psalm to myself at night, lying on my back in the dark, so this was not unusal.   And although at times it felt as if I was in a period of self-imposed exile from my friends, and all that I held dear and familiar, I also discovered that, in the silence of my own company -- from deep within the confines of that profoundly alone sanctuary of my sepulchre space --  I was also  finding, as Eddy promised, refuge from my foes - the dark and insidious suggestions of self-doubt, regret, anger, frustration...and in this space, I could begin to glimpse Christ's solution to the great problem of being.

I could, as "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely" (this link is the acapella version) suggested, walk with that feeling of loneliness, until I discovered its meaning in my life.  I could companion with it, until  it blessed me with the only kind of friendship that no one, and nothing,  could take away...my oneness with God, with Love. 

I believe that this is the space that Paul is speaking to us from in Romans when he says:

"I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

When we cease to see ourselves as the object, or recipient of love, and begin to accept our relationship to "the love of God" as its vehicle, its body, its articulation of being, and not its destination, we being to live life as one who can never be deprived of love...because the only love that matters in our lives, the only love that is divine, is the love that we ourselves embody or express.

For me, this was the meaning of loneliness.  To teach me that my relationship to Love is only as strong and inviolate, as my willingness to rise from the ashes of hurt, shame, anger, betrayal, sadness, sorrow, exhaustion, and "love more."  This Love "alone is Life."

These days, with Jeff in Boston and the girls coming and going...school, soccer, their dad and Melinda's house, friends...I spend a lot of time alone...but I am never lonely.  Once I learned its meaning and purpose, I discovered that every silent moment in the "sepulchre" was an opportunity to  fill my heart with the pure joy of consciously being the love of Love for anything and everything that crossed my mental path.  And when I am in this space I  enjoy the company of dancing, singing, signing angels...my best friends.  

with love...and with Love....
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Lila June Jones 2009]