This Is About My Friend – My Best Friend

Aloneness can bring utter loneliness or it can bring peace that is life sustaining.  Aloneness often arises from life pauses. We all experience them; pauses that cause us so much grief that we don’t want to restart the living of life.  We just want to stay still, which is okay for a moment, or two, but not for a lifetime.  These pauses can also be of great joy, Christmas day, birth, marriage, or running your first marathon.

Recently, I was told by a friend (you know who you are, but did you know that it was a sparkler you gave me that day when you said,  “You are a positive person.  I’m sure that sustains you.”

I thought about that for a time, wondering about her assessment.  She knows some of my pain.  She knows the words that come out of my mouth.  She knows when I’m naughty and when I’m nice.  I guess she also knows that I’m only human and just once in a while I need a reminder, whether a gentle sparkler offered to relieve the darkness, or a good, solid 2×4 to get me past my determination to live in a somewhat stubborn manner.

There are times when we ache with the problems of these life pauses, whether it is grief, illness, not being able to make ends meet, or not knowing how to correct the mistakes we’ve made and regret.  These life pauses zap our strength and there seems to be no restarting the life we thought we wanted or deserved.  Instead, we put one foot in front of the other, we breathe in and we breathe out, all the while simply wanting to give up, to let go and to surrender.

But today, like yesterday, and like tomorrow, we’ve got to take care of others who need us – the kids, our aging parents, or best friends.  This is what restarts those life pauses.  We put our aloneness aside and get about caring for others, even when we’re not sure we can take care of ourselves.  Sometimes our aloneness even causes us to reach out and grasp life with both hands, accepting that jump-start from others that propels us into, well, life.  This is the payoff for that aloneness.

In my darkest life pauses, struggling and not sure what to do next, I would say the following prayer, “God.  God.  God.  Amen.”

I didn’t know what I was asking for or what I expected.  What I now know is that God knew.  He sent me love and caring friends and family and sometimes, even strangers to help me.  He provided for me and his providence calmed my fears.  He even gave me work to do.  He was always one step ahead of me though I thought life was still on pause, allowing me to choose for myself, even when I thought there were no choices.

He also knows that we need aloneness to search within our self – to hold onto our heart’s hope, to face our fears, to accept help and to forgive ourselves.  It is in the doing of this that we realize that we were never alone during these life pauses, because now matters.  I use aloneness for guidance, to sort through the good and bad of life and to shake off discouragement – which is a waste of time.  He has gifted me to live out my life in such a way that I restart those life pauses with joy and gratitude.

If I’m a positive person, it is only because He is always there because best friends never leave you. Right, my friend?