Growing Up

I'm finally back to this writing site.

I was blessed to be with family and friends on my annual holiday trip to Nashville. My youngest grandson there turned 18 on December 22nd and his older brother, 20 on January 21st. Ben, the oldest, moved into a house in Nashville with three friends shortly before Christmas. Though Will (youngest) is being urged to leave home for college, I heard whispers of lonliness in my son's voice as he spoke of the possibility of an empty nest next fall. Since his wife has another year of law school (after this semester) and spends much of her time studying, he is imagining a lot of quiet alone time. That's not something he cherishes. More golf, yes. Fewer people for whom to cook? Not necessarily.

My son and daughter left and came back--more than once--and another young friend came to live with me as my daughter left for college in Colorado. My home had been a hub of activity for my children and their friends for years. The quiet would be nice, I thought. However, like my son, I wasn't accustomed to it. We are both people who need people in our lives.

I made growing into quiet time more challenging by moving to a new city with a new job, new home, new church, needing to make new friends. I solved the problem most days by packing up my car with whatever I needed for after-work activities and leaving the lovely home with a view of the lake and mountains for the city. I worked on my roses and small garden early in the morning before I left for work--or on Sunday afternoons.

I covered my inner lonliness with work and volunteer activities. I was too quick to take on challenges that shouldn't have been mine--and to try to be friends with women and men who needed something they thought I could provide. More than once I realized that I had been the one turned to in the hard times but ignored when fun was the agenda for the day.

I had a good life. That's how I thought of it (and still do most of the time)--a job that was challenging with a high profile in the business community, a church community that provided a social life and a place for me to hone leadership skills, volunteer activities that helped others, and volunteer positions in the arts community as well. There were women friends with whom I traded check ins. I could easily have a meeting or a friend to meet after work every day. I developed a group of women friends, who, like me, had careers that weren't the usual in that city at that time. I had time to hike and friends with whom to share my love of nature. Yet there was something missing. I would have told you it was having a good man in my life. It would take a
dramatic change and a spiritual awakening that didn't come quickly for me to realize that wasn't the missing piece.

Knowing that Divine Love is the answer to that inner longing and having it as the cornerstone of my life doesn't mean that I don't sometimes miss the clatter of those earlier times. It doesn't mean that having the right human lover wouldn't be a blessing. It does mean that there's no striving for something out there to fill that inner space. The Divine Indwelling was already there. I simply wasn't tuned in.