When we were choosing our spiritual disciplines for the
assignment in term one, I initially took one look at the discipline of solitude
and decided then and there to avoid it like the plague. Why, you might ask? Put
simply, I know myself. (Or so I thought…) I knew that if I as an introvert gave
myself even the tiniest excuse to not be present, I never would, especially at
the start of the year when so much of what we were doing was going and meeting
new people (something I have and probably always will struggle with, at least
outside of specific circumstances). Past experiences of life lived away at home
have taught me a lot about how not to do life with other people, and in particular
highlighted the need for me to be able to put myself out there and make
connections, lest I fall into another deep dark pit of loneliness and
depression. Fun times… Anyway, the Christmas break this year brought up a whole
bunch of stuff I didn’t even realise I was struggling with, in particular
around why I do some of the things I do or don’t do (To anyone reading this who
also read my term one report on simplicity, honestly just disregard most of
what I said in that, it turns out I had completely the wrong idea... To anyone
who didn’t, don’t worry about it, you didn’t miss much). To summarise, what I
discovered is that I am really bad at being alone, and even worse at being
alone “well”. While simplicity was good in the sense that it allowed me to be
more present, it also masked what was arguably the much bigger issue in that I
really struggle with being absent. More to the point, I discovered I have some
pretty deep rooted insecurities around being by myself, but to go into those in
any kind of depth would take a whole other report, and to be honest I would
rather not deal with that right now. In short though, I’ve realised that in
order to better be in community, I first need to be able to be away from
community.
Enter the discipline of solitude. At first glance, an
introvert’s dream. Post university (though I’ve only recently realised this),
my worst nightmare. I initially set about trying to practice this discipline
with some pretty clear goals in mind. Find a space, for a set time, alone, with
no distractions other than the ones in my own head. Just me, my thoughts, and
God. All of me. All to God. Nothing more. Nothing less.
This presented a problem however: At what point does
“finding the quiet place” start becoming legalistic? Or, even worse, at what
point does it become about chasing a feeling rather than chasing God? John Mark
Comer’s book “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” suggests starting small with
this, and so I did. On day one, I set a timer for 5 minutes, found a quiet
place, and sat there for a bit. This was - perhaps unsurprisingly - a pretty
underwhelming experience, both in the sense that nothing of note really
happened and also in that it wasn’t even particularly “challenging”. Before I
had even begun to really settle into anything, my timer was beeping at me
telling me I was done. The next couple of days were rather similar, and though
I upped the timer to 10 minutes it didn’t really feel as if anything had
changed. Quiet times were over before they even really felt like they had begun,
and to be honest I was beginning to feel a little bit demotivated. What was the
point in me doing this if nothing was going to come of it? Instead of giving up
however, I did pretty much the only thing I could think of at the time, and
upped the timer again.
It was at this point everything shifted. It turns out that
past about the 10 minute mark, being left alone by yourself in a quiet place
with nothing for company but your own thoughts gets really rather uncomfortable.
I have always, even at the best of times, been a bit of an overthinker, and
recently discovered loneliness related anxiety kinda just puts the icing on the
proverbial cake in that regard. Seemingly little things end up getting blown up
way out of proportion and even though logically you know you should be fine,
you can’t help but think about how much longer you have to endure before you’re
done and can escape back to some form of “normality”. Maybe this kind of
reaction is reasonable initially, maybe it isn’t, I’m not really sure. More likely
it is simply a product of my having spent most of the past 13 years of my life
in a constant state of doing things (read escapism in the form of video games)
in an attempt to not have to deal with the real world more than I absolutely
have to, which is one of the biggest barriers I was hoping to be able to break
through this year. On balance, I think I’m going to call the fact I’ve finally
confronted that a positive.
It might seem a little strange,
especially given how challenged I felt to attempt this in the first place, but day
five was the first day I actually thought to pray into these quiet times. My
prayer was a pretty simple one: "God, I give this time to you" which
made it all more personally frustrating when I managed to get distracted by
things going on outside my window three minutes in. I did manage a full 15
minutes after that point, but it wasn’t quite what I hoped it might be. Day six
on the other hand, although similar, was significantly more prayerful, and much
more positive. There is something incredibly freeing about coming to God with
*everything* in your head, no matter how crazy, or weird, or just plain
unhelpful it might seem, and just giving it all to Him. He knows it all anyway,
but in our vulnerability He redeems that which we give him to redeem. Whenever
my thoughts wandered, I would just pray “All for you” to refocus and return to
the quiet place, and for the first time since I started I began to feel at
peace there.
That peace was shattered on day 8,
when I was forced to confront the possibility of being *alone* alone for the
first time. I won’t go into too much detail here, but suffice to say my quiet
time was in a place other than the house, and my anxiety went off on one about
10 minutes in. It was so bad that the only thing I could think to do was pray
“protect me” which might seem strange as I was never in any real danger, but
the moment I did I was just filled with a supernatural sense of peace. I wish I
could say that that sense lasted, but the truth is it was only in praying that
prayer continually on the way back to the house I was able to remain in that
place. Walking through that door felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my
shoulders. I still don’t entirely know what to make of what happened on that
day, but I am thankful that God was with me through it, because I don’t know
what I would have done if he hadn’t been. Despite all this though, I felt
challenged to go further, and so I upped the timer again, to 30 minutes this
time.
Considering what a massive step up
this promised to be (from 15 minutes to 30) quiet time on days 9 and 10 was
surprisingly easy, nothing of note really happened. This turned out to be a bit
of a double edged sword however, as I hit a bit of a brick wall after this
point. I had been so sure that increasing my time in the quiet place would
result in significant changes, that when it didn’t it kind of killed my
motivation to be alone in that way. Day 10 was the last day silence and
solitude looked anything like my original plan, but thankfully it is far from
the end of the story. From day 11 onwards, quiet times were a lot less
structured, and consisted mostly either of prayer walking around Christ Church
Meadow, or of reading and praying through whatever passages of scripture I felt
drawn to on that particular day. (The “Saints Alive!” weekly chunk readings and
daily bible passages helped quite a bit with this, as to begin with I wasn’t
really following any sort of reading plan). This actually marked a pretty
significant step forward for me, as motivating myself to leave the house
without a specific reason has been a real struggle for me at times, so the fact
I’ve been able to motivate myself to go on prayer walks alone is probably a
bigger deal for me than it might seem. More recently I have been working
through the new testament in chronological order as a personal challenge for
the season of lent, using an app called “A Lamp Unto” which has been pretty
interesting, as it has highlighted all the ways the gospels are both incredibly
similar (looking at you Matthew Mark and Luke) and incredibly different (John)
but still carry the same message. This app has actually been incredibly
helpful, as you can set it to put a notification on your phone at a set time
each day to remind you to do the reading, which has made it really easy to
build into my morning routine, and significantly cut down on the amount of time
I am spending on social media, which is a bonus (turning off all notifications
from Facebook and Instagram probably helped quite a bit with that as well –
another recommendation from JMC’s book). These times in my mornings have been
for the most part fairly positive, and are something I think I will probably
continue even at the end of lent, but they don’t really achieve what I
initially set out to do by taking on this challenge. Through this experience I
am coming to realise that solitude and simplicity aren’t actually so different.
While simplicity is about setting aside your desire for worldly things in order
to hear from God better, solitude is about setting aside *yourself* for the
same reason.
The question on my mind is this:
Is God not present if I don’t “feel” something? In view of not wanting to sound
heretical here, clearly God is always present, it is in his nature, but I think
it’s probably fair of me to say that sometimes his presence is more obvious
than at other times. My goal starting out was to get to a place where I could
feel comfortable searching for Him in the quiet place, and to a certain extent
you could argue that I have succeeded in this goal, but looking back, it’s a
little bit difficult to see how exactly. It certainly doesn’t feel like
anything has changed. Quiet times as they are right now are positive, but not
really something new. God has absolutely shown up at times, but at other times
it has felt a bit like trying to chase the wind, a pointless exercise. In the
end though, as it says in 1 Kings 19: The LORD was not in the wind, or the
earthquake, or the fire, but in the gentle whisper. My worry is that in chasing
the dramatic, I might have inadvertently missed the whole point of the
discipline, to find and be found by God in the simplicity of the still small
voice.
To end, I just want to leave you with the words of a song
which has been very significant for me over the past few weeks. The song is
“God Help Me” by Plumb, and it is my prayer over myself both right now and
going forward, that I would continue to seek God in the quiet place, and go (or
stay) wherever He is calling me, whatever the cost.
God Help Me: Plumb - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wRpTySE_8A
There’s a wrestling in my heart and my mind
A disturbance and a tension I cannot seem to drive
And if I’m honest there’s quite a bit of fear
To sit here in this silence and really hear you
What will you ask of me?
Will I listen to your voice when you speak?
Help me to move
Help me to see
Help me to do whatever you would ask of me
Help me to go
God help me to stay
I’m feeling so alone here and I know that You’re faithful
But I can barely breathe
God help me
Sometimes things, they are black and white
Sometimes they are not and that leaves us torn inside
And in the middle we are left to wonder
Who we are, what you want, and where we’re going
Oh such a mystery
I don’t always understand
But I believe
Help me to move
Help me to see
Help me to do whatever you would ask of me
Help me to go
God help me to stay
I’m feeling so alone here and I know that You’re faithful
But I can barely breathe
God help me
I don’t know the future
It’s one day at a time
But I know I’ll be OK with your hand holding mine
So take all my resistance
Oh God I need your grace
One step and then the other
Show me the way
Help me to move
Help me to see
Help me to do whatever you would ask of me
Help me to go
God help me to stay
I’m feeling so alone here and I know that You’re faithful
But I can barely breathe
God help me
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