Loneliness!.

Every Tuesday morning I click on the Zoom link and join about eight other women from our former church now called Church of the Savior in South Bend. On Monday I prepared by reading the Bible passage and thinking about the questions. This semester we also read a sermon by Barbara Brown Taylor. This gave me some structure in my life for the early week.

We usually entered into the morning session with a contemplative prayer.  We discussed the passage and then we shared our personal needs for prayer. We had three wonderful leaders who took turns with guiding us. The women are all of a generation of my own children. Most of them were mothers and were concerned in this pandemic year about their children's schooling and welfare. The concerns were not trivial. It has been a difficult year for children and parents. There were some health concerns as well with surgeries and illnesses.  It was good for me to see the faces of these lovely women in their Zoom boxes. It was good for me to think about the needs of others and to have people to pray for. 

 Last week was our last session. I am feeling very lonely today and having a hard time snapping out of it. Maybe I am missing my South Bend friends. But that is not all of it. I have to find a way to get a life here in Princeton. I was the one who wanted to move here but Jim is the one who has found a life (or rather continued the one he had) with his writing and conferences (by Zoom now)  and his weekly golf game and plenty of TV sports.  

 So today I tried hard to think of what I could do this afternoon while Jim played golf. Clean out the boxes of music and my former work related stuff in the garage? Take the car and explore a town or a park? Sort through the many books I have accumulated this year and prepare them for donation at the library (when they are ready to accept them!)? But I felt powerless to make myself do anything at all. 

 I had Jim drop me off at the corner of the apartment complex and I walked to my "grotto" along the canal. There was God's gift for me--a group of wild yellow irises along the canal. I think I heard the thousands of cicadas buzzing--although it seemed a higher tone than I had imagined them to make.

  And just now at home again my phone sounded with a photo of David and Christina dressed in red for Pentecost services in South Bend saying dressing in red made them think of me. I know I had suggested red for everyone for Pentecost at one point and on occasion wore a red dress that is still hanging in a spare closet.  David said my influence persists. That photo and text cheered me up.   I texted David that he had helped with my lonely day! 

I will pray for a way forward. I am responsible for my own happiness and can't ask anyone else to find it for me. However I feel as if I were given two gifts this afternoon and for that I am grateful!  Those gifts were answers to my prayer.