I have never felt so alone in my life. Which is ironic, given that I am never actually alone. Yet despite the constant external stimuli, from four children needing me for daily life and homeschool, I feel so incredibly alone.
A few months ago, I was a social butterfly. My schedule littered with social engagements, trying to navigate new friendships and volunteering for all sorts of things. But as my schedule filled, my frustration and anger soared. Being busy makes me anxious, being anxious makes me stressed, being stressed makes me angry, being angry makes me mean.
I had to pull back from volunteering, from trying to cram play dates into our homeschool days, and from doing anything that kept my focus off of working with my kids. Their school has to be a priority,
But in doing that, all those friendships I was forming, slowly started to fade. Those women either had kids younger than mine and so their homeschool days aren't quiet full days yet, or their kids went to public school and so the time they were free, I was, and still am, not.
I have never felt so alone as an adult in my life. It's not because I don't want to have a social life but because I don't have the time for anything more than surface level interactions. By the time the weekend rolls around, I am spent. I don't want to go out in the evenings for a girls night. I don't want to go to someone else's house for anything. I want to put on my pajamas and sit in my own home with no where to be and nothing to do.
Alas, that isn't even an option. By the time the weekend arrives, our schedule may come to a halt for a precious few days, but the house work has slowly built into a mountain of unavoidable responsibility. The leaning tower of laundry mocks my attempt to relax. The dirty bathrooms and overflowing trashcans demand attention. Outside, the yard silently protests its importance as the curb appeal of our house begins to wither along with last years attempt at a pot garden.
This is not actually a garden of pot, but a garden of potted plants on our deck (in the vain hope the chickens wouldn't get to the "harvest". I'm not sure it would even qualify as a harvest). At any rate, the pot garden is now a bunch of dead potted plants that are overgrown and honestly played nicely into a haunted, abandon house look for Halloween... except we decorate for fall, not Halloween. Sooooo... trash, our deck looked (lets be honest LOOKS, as in still does because I have YET to find the time to clean it up) like trash but golly our front door looked cute.
I am very much lost in the lonely of motherhood. Perhaps, if my kids went to public school I could find more time to socialize with coffee meet ups and morning book clubs. There is also the dance dilemma, if only my kids did not do extra curriculars I would be free every evening to do all the things. This of course I know is a lie, somehow despite our best efforts, we end up chaotically busy.
I wake up every day, day in and day out, having to be "on" and "present". I have to cook, clean, plan, prep, teach, doctor, nurse, transport and then after falling into bed....do it all again the next day.
It is a blessing, do not get me wrong, but it is exhausting. It's lonely. I would love for time to genuinely get to know one of these new moms I meet in passing, but when? I feel like the woman at the well. The story in the bible that once held very little meaning to me personally, has begun to take on a new light in my current season of life. My season of lonely.
If you haven't read it, or heard it before, the story is in the gospel of John chapter 4.
Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
John 4:1-6
Jesus had to go through Samaria. That's interesting because the Samaritans were hated by Jewish people in that time. The Samaritan people came to be when Judea was captured by the Assyrians. Some Jewish people were held in captivity and ended up intermarrying with some Assyrians and what resulted was the Samaritan people. They were half gentile, half Jewish. I have found myself thinking about this, the Samaritan people were so hated by the Jewish people because they were a visible and constant reminder of the Jewish peoples disobedience to God's command (at that time). The chosen people were not supposed to intermarry outside of the chosen people. All that to say, most Jewish travelers would've gone the LONG way around Samaria to avoid the region entirely. But Jesus had to go through it.
We don't know it at this point in time, but God has a plan in this story. There is a woman in Samaria that has been crying out. She's had five husbands and the scripture tells us she doesn't have one at the time of the story, she has a man but he's not her husband. That means FIVE times someone has said yes I will take care of you and FIVE times, it fell through. This woman is going to the well in the middle of the day. It might be to avoid crowds, some people believe since noon is the hottest part of the day, she must have been going then to avoid when everyone else would go during the cooler hours. But maybe, she is just...thirsty, desperately thirsty.
Maybe she is going to the well alone,
in the middle of the day,
because she is so desperately thirsty,
from being chaotically busy making life happen,
this is the only time she can actually make it there,
and if she doesn't go at noon, she wont be able to later.
Maybe she is going to the well alone,
because she is so chaotically busy,
that she doesn't have the time
to make the connections,
to have the friends,
to bring to the dang well.
Maybe she is at the well every day, with a heavy heart, feeling lost and lonely. She cry's out silently but from deep within -- Is it me? Am I the problem?
Her painful prayer isn't eloquent, she's not even sure it is a prayer, she hasn't even put the feelings in to real words to speak them into existence. Her heart throbs with a steady, dull ache of loneliness despite being surrounded by a busy life.
The gnawing question, she is afraid to answer herself will not stop echoing in depth of her soul - Am I worthy?
I am so thirsty. I am so tired of being stuck in this race of life.
I need real connections that won't fail when life gets hard or crazy.
Suddenly the woman at the well, isn't a Samaritan woman at all. She is me. How often have I thrown my concerns up in a desperate cry, in a form of prayer without a proper opening, quoted scripture, eloquent words and those fancy sounding "Father Gods" sprinkled in.
Jesus was Jewish, but he chose to go to Samaria. In fact it says "he had to go". Sometimes we have to go through the things, but Jesus goes there with us. He meets this woman at the well, he is waiting for her when she arrives. She hadn't called on his name, she was just going to the well, alone and thirsty. How beautiful is that? Jesus is waiting for us, waiting in the lonely, for when we arrive because he has heard our wordless prayers.
He has answered our desperate cries and he is sitting at the well waiting for us.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
John 4:7-15
No matter how hard I try, I will never be able to fill this lonely ache of mine without God. Jesus says it so plainly. I can fill my schedule with all the things, I will still feel lonely. I could pull the kids from dance and have every evening to do whatever I wish, I would still feel lonely. I could send my kids to public school, go get my doctorate and be a nurse practitioner, I would still feel lonely. Nothing of this earth will ever fill that longing to be in union with our creator, except being in communion with Him.
This season of lonely, is not because I am constantly over stimulated, short on time and desperate for a real mental break. This season of lonely is God meeting me at the well. He is saying, drink from the living water. Let me fill you.
The woman at the well is a Samaritan and Jesus was Jewish, she is shocked he is asking her for a drink. Jesus says, if only you knew the gift of God. The gift of eternal life, which we often say with such commonality I think we lose sight of the gravity of that phrase.
The gift of being in communion with the creator of our very souls.
The gift of being loved, always and forever no matter what.
The gift of being valued and sought after.
The gift of being enough.
Jesus says, if you knew who was asking you for a drink, you would ask for living water. In all my cries of desperation, by tears of frustration, my worry in the midst of my lonely and my heart ache in this season of stressful disconnectedness, I lost sight of the significance of asking the Holy Spirit, the living water, to fill my weary cup.
Jesus sits and talks with this woman at the well. He knows he only has a short time on earth but he makes the time to speak to this Samaritan woman at the well. If you read on through the scripture she runs to the town to tell them about Jesus and says "he told me everything I ever did". He knew her, really knew her, all the good, the bad and the ugly. And yet, he waited at that well, in the heat of the day, for her.
Flowers grow in the valleys, where water run down the mountains and they can take root to flourish. Some times in our lonely seasons, Christ is planting seeds that will bloom into a harvest. Jesus goes on to explain to the disciples he is doing Gods work and to look around there are fields ripe with the harvest of the crop of eternal life.
Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true.
John 4: 36-37
Jesus is waiting for me in this season. Waiting for me to seek him out and ask him for a drink of living water. Waiting for me to fill my cup with His word, His strength, His love. He does this knowing it is Gods plan. My life is not meant to impact mine alone. The seeds God is planting in me will bloom one day, and eventually propagate into another field, another harvest for someone else to reap. My faith in Christ, my blooming field of flowers cultivated in a valley of lonely, might generate seeds that sow into someone else walking to the well. The well where Jesus is waiting.
Maybe in their story Jesus is using someone like me,
to wait at that well,
to be his hands and feet
to ask the question,
Have you drank from the living water?
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