Looking Outward

Do you ever just get really lonely?

Sometimes it feels like I am inside a glass container, screaming at the top of my lungs, begging someone, anyone to listen.  But everyone walks on past, oblivious to my existence, deaf to my pleading.

I love being a stay at home mom.  It’s something I wouldn’t give up for anything.  But sometimes it makes me feel invisible.  Like the world is going on all around me, and I’m on the other side of a door that no one knocks on.

It’s hard not to have a partner in crime sometimes.  It’s hard to be the one making the rules, taking care of needs, answering questions, healing wounds.  It’s a privilege, no doubt.  But still it can be hard.

I read The Red Tent a few years back.  It changed the way I think about so many things.  It seems to be a book that so many people read so many different things into.  But for me, it was about community.  About women banding together to raise their children together, to accomplish their tasks together, to go through life together.

And here we are in our modern day America with our single family homes, separated from those around us by walls both visible and invisible.  We can talk.  We can find communion.  We can discover common ground.

And then we disperse.

Back into our homes.

Back by ourselves.

Sometimes I feel like this loneliness will overtake me as I desperately search for other souls out there.  But then I remember to look outward.  I remember that when we seek to understand others, our need to understand can subside.  When we seek to meet the needs of others, our own needs don’t seem so great.  When we seek to serve, we no longer seek so much to be served.

I ask myself what really matters.  What I really need.  What I was put here to do.  And the following lyrics from Mark Schultz come to mind…

“I want to give her the world

I want to hold her hand

I wanna be her mom for as long as I can

And I wanna live every moment until that day comes

I want to show her what it means to be loved.”

I think it sums up life, you know.  We can search high and low, leaving no corner unturned, desperately trying to get our needs met, but if we let that pass away, if we let our own fear and pain and sadness fade a bit into the background and instead focus on giving love… well, maybe then we might finally find what we are looking for.

It’s in giving that we receive.

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