Leadership Blog: September 2013

Each month we have a volunteer on our leadership committee submit a blog post.  Our goal is to model transparency in the real struggles and victories we too face in motherhood and in our personal lives.

Submitted by Miriam Fredericks - Publicity and Social Media Coordinator

What do Elizabeth Elliott, famous Christian missionary, and Louis CK, famous comedian, have in common?  Both of them have something really great to say about loneliness.  Even though they come from different ends of the spectrum, both conversations really struck me when I heard them recently. 

Here's what Louis CK had to say on Conan this week.  I'll edit it down to the parts that hit home, and because, you know, Louis CK isn't really known for his super bright outlook and advanced usage of the English language.  He was talking about why he won't get his pre-teen daughters cell phones.

"I just don't let them have it yet.
It's easy.
Just say no.
You can't have it.
You know, it's bad for you.
I don't care what you want.
I'm not raising -- the children I'm raising the grown-ups that they're going to be.
I have to raise them with the tools to get through a terrible life.
The thing is you need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That's what the phones are taking away.
The ability to just sit there like this.
That's being a person, right?
You know, underneath everything in your life there's that thing, that empty -- forever empty, you know what I'm talking about?
Sometimes when things clear away, you're in your car and you go, oh, no, here it comes that 'I'm alone.'
Like it starts to visit on you, just this sadness.
Life is tremendously sad just by being in it.
And so you're driving and then you go, oh, that's why we text and drive.
I look around pretty much 100% of people driving are texting.
But people risk ruining their own and taking a life because they don't want to be alone for a second.
So anyway, I started to get that sad feeling.
I was reaching for the phone.
You know what, don't.
Just be sad.
Just let the sadness stand in the way of it.
And let it hit you like a truck.
I cried so much and it was beautiful.
It was like this beautiful -- it was just this -- sadness is poetic.
You're lucky to live sad moments.
And then I had happy feelings because when you let yourself feel sad your body has like anti-bodies.
You have happiness rushing in to meet the sadness.
I was grateful to feel sad and then I met it with true profound happiness."

That really rung true for me.  After I had Joshua (4yrs old) I struggled with some post partum depression.  It was so hard to fight something that was so deafening and so isolating.  Luckily, I had a few really important people that would sit beside me and encourage me to let the sadness and hopelessness roll over me like a wild ocean tide.  Just their hand on my back told me I was safe, that the feelings wouldn't drown me, and reminded me that there's so much more than the pin hole view of life that I had at that moment.  I'm really blessed that this period was short lived.  I know it's not so with a lot of moms.  (If you're struggling, PLEASE LET SOMEONE KNOW! We'd be honored to walk with you in whatever capacity you need.) 

But just because the prescription ran out and I no longer struggle with despondent thoughts, doesn't mean that there's a regular visit with that uninvited Loneliness.  And it doesn't mean that I always know how to kick it to the curb.  Being tired, worn thin, bewildered by the woman in the mirror, etc. leaves you in a hot mess that allows isolation, loneliness, self-deprecation and loads of other loathsome thoughts to make camp in your brain.

So let's get to the good stuff.  Let's end on a note that enlivens us.  If anyone had any reason to feel isolated, lonely, and bitter, Elizabeth Elliott did.  Read her biography - it's riveting.  But here's what she has to say about it all.  Read it aloud and let THIS truth wash over you.

"Loneliness is one kind of "dying" most of us learn about sooner or later. Far from being "bad" for us, a hindrance to spiritual growth, it may be the means of unfolding spiritual "blossoms" hitherto enfolded. The full-blown beauty of the wild rose, its very "fulfillment" depends on its continuously dying and living again. . . . In God's economy, whether he is making a flower or a human soul, nothing ever comes to nothing. The losses are his way of accomplishing the gains."

So, now, when those pessimistic feelings wash over you, remind yourselves - remind ME - that nothing ever comes to nothing. The losses I feel are simply, and most wonderfully, God's way of accomplishing his gains.