You are never alone

Alone. I came home today from the memorial service for a friend and found a note from my husband, saying that he had gone up the river and would be "home by dark." I felt alone.

I sat down with a cup of hot tea and asked myself what about being alone right now feels so different. Most of the time I don't mind being alone, in fact I often crave time by myself after being with other people. Much of my work involves being with others, actively listening to painful experiences of their life. Wether at the office or at home, being alone allows me to relax and refresh my energies. 

So when I listened to my question 'what about being alone right now feels so different?' I became aware of the heartache. It was not the being alone, it was the painful awareness that I'd never interact with my friend again in this life. I'd not seen her for awhile.  After we graduated from Grad school, we went back to our respective homes which were hundreds of miles apart. We had discussed some ideas about working together but each of us became busy in our spheres of influence.  When I heard from her about five years later, it became clear that though we had the same degree, her passion was to work with troubled families, mine to work with individuals. She asked me for a letter of recommendation for a position with WA State Children and Family Services which I gladly wrote and shortly after that she moved here. Still later, she opened her own agency to help troubled families and then contracted with Nez Perce County Court Services.  Both of us were busy with out work and families but every so often our paths would cross professionally. I think my last conversation with her was a few weeks ago over the phone, a professional referral. But I loved her and I think she loved me.

I loved her spunkiness, she was funny, full of life; tough she'd experienced a lot of heartache in her life, both in her family of origin and her own family and personal life. That's were her passion to help families came from. And help she did - the number of people attending her funeral and their stories testified to that. Professionals from the courts and individual families and friends shared how she encouraged and mentored and modeled love and kindness. I too shared how her kindness had touched my life when just before graduation I had an accident and she took me into her little studio appartment and cared for me for several days. 

And now I realize once more that I'm in the process of converting a living relationship into a memory relationship. It's what I teach some of my clients who have difficulties with letting go of loved ones who've died. That aching, longing, painful feeling is from going through that change. I'll not fight it, for fighting it leads to more pain.  I'll surrender to the process once more. Having gone through it before, it's not entirely unfamiliar. And as I surrender I become aware, I'm not alone, I'm in the presence of our Creator, Redeemer, and Restorer, Jesus Christ the Life Giver, our Lord and our God. We're never alone.