My wife was out of town for a few days last week visiting her sister. As she was pulling out of the driveway, I shouted that I would be pining after her until she came home. I feigned a tear and everything! With a half smile she nodded and drove off. She knew better. Not that I wouldn’t miss her. I would miss her. I did miss her a ton. But I was also grateful for some downtime. Man time. No shower, sit in my underwear, binge watch Parks and Rec, eat a slab of ribs time. My time. She knew it and I knew it. She wasn’t gone an hour before I had assumed the position.
Underwear. Couch. Ribs. I won’t post a picture because I don’t want you to think less of me.
But it was good.
However, the good only lasted 24 hours. Then I got lonely. It wasn’t the kind of lonely that could be satisfied by sitting in a jam-packed Starbucks. I tried. Something more was at play. A crowd alone can’t fill in the holes of our hearts—we require the right people. Even while Ron Swanson’s voice occupied my living room, my loneliness turned into angst—an exilic anxiety.
I needed my people.
We all have them. A wife, a husband, or an accountability partner. Pastors and neighbors can fill this intrinsic need. But more often, community takes the form of a people, not just a person. A tribe.
People fill in the gaps—a small group, Sunday school class, or Alcoholics Anonymous. We need them. Our hearts and lives are made for them.
Even from the beginning of the Creation narrative, Adam wasn’t whole until Eve was present. In fact, it wasn’t good for him to be alone. It turns out we are not fully human without each other. And so the original Man Time/Me Time got nixed pretty early.
Interestingly, one of the most stern of punishments in the Israelite community was to be exiled. When someone broke one of the more severe of God’s laws, they were put outside the camp for a time. And they learned very quickly that a person living by himself–on his own and separated from community–is not a whole person.
We need each other.
Feeling the full weight of this isolation can fracture a soul. My mind drifts to the movie Cast Away. Tom Hanks is making conversation with a volleyball. We nervously laugh but secretly we know our reality is tethered to people. These people then anchor us to real life and faith and substance.
We know this to be true. And when the Apostle Paul reminds us, “For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone,” (Romans 14:7), we simply nod our heads and wonder why we continue to do life all by ourselves.
I was glad for my ribs and me time. But I was even more glad for my wife to walk through the door on Saturday night and put a period on my wondering. No great revelations here. But I found that the ribs taste a little better and the laughter is a little fuller with her by my side.
