Henry Nouwen has quite a lot to say about solitude, particularly in it's importance to our relationship to God and to "discover how dependent we are. Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense..." He continues by saying, "Our tendency is to leave the fearful solitude quickly and get busy again to reassure ourselves that we are somebodies."
I can't empathize with leaving solitude to be somebody, but I certainly can empathize with leaving the solitude to try to fix the very thing that drove me there in the first place.
Today I got a new appreciation for the solitude, and its purpose as a place beyond un-distracted pure devotion to God. I didn't go there by choice per se, but I certainly found myself there in my truck driving the streets of Houston from appointment to appointment.
On auto pilot I went from place to place, no music playing, no distractions other that the traffic I paid no attention to. I found myself alone with my thoughts and feelings. Feelings, emotions, that over the past couple of days had come to dominate my thinking. I had left the peaceful joy of my spirit to embrace the deteriorating emotions of the moment. Depression, disappointment, discouragement... all the d-words crashed against my souls like the waves of a storm. Add to those some i-words like inadequate, and ignorant and you can get the impression of where my thoughts were. But in the solitude I got the opportunity to face these emotions and the thoughts associated with them. I have said that emotional pain is not something to be ignored, but embraced. And today I was able to practice that very thing... embracing the pain.
I had to get to a place to disengage the day, and to focus on God. To restore my focus and get back to that joy found only in the Spirit I had to first grab hold of the emotions. Up to this point I was making excuses, I was planning an exit from the pain. I was not owning the feelings, but blaming lack for them. I was blaming the environment if you will. It was not my fault, so I must find the fault and cure it.
I knew that I was operating on emotion, and I also knew I needed to return to that place of "walking by the spirit." To get there I had to first grab the emotion. I did that by taking ownership of it. Yes, I was depressed. Admitting it to myself somehow stopped the panic. It did not ease the pain, but it changed the focus. Kind of like being trapped in a room with a rattlesnake. There's nowhere to run, so you had better admit the snake is in the room so you can deal with it.
Next I examined the emotions. Why do I feel this way? And sure I had my reasons... everyone of those reasons was a lie. Lies like this new job is not going to meet my needs, so and so is disappointed, my wife is going to think I'm inadequate... lots of perceived reasons.
But I had to compare those emotions and their reasons to where I left the Spirit. God guided me to the new job, so He must have known 3 out of 5 appointments would cancel. He just didn't let me in on that detail.
Short version is as I compared the reasons for the emotions with what the Holy Spirit was saying I found out what I already knew. The emotions are the liars. The waves are not going to kill me. The boat is not going to capsize. In fact, I am not drowning, but in fact this is just a little midst, not even a storm at all. To go further, God knew it all before He sent me here.
And with that, I was back in the joy of the Holy Spirit. Emotion and thoughts are brought back into subjection to the spirit of God.
For me, I need that time to disengage. I need solitude to wrestle the emotions and feelings before anything else is to happen. This time may be minutes, but more often hours, and sometimes days. But it is a solitude that is spent in the arms of God, allowing Him to watch me wrestle with myself a little while before pointing out the obviously with His unbending truth.
Don't be afraid of solitude. It is not a place of loneliness or boredom. It is a place of being the Father's Child, The Savior's sibling, and The Holy Spirit's vessel. Go there, and go often. As it is the short cut to freedom.
Oswald Chambers says it this way, "Anything that disturbs rest in Him must be cured at once, and it is not cured by being ignored, but by coming to Jesus Christ. If we come to Him and ask Him to produce Christ-consciousness, He will always do it until we learn to abide in Him." I say coming to Christ in solitude.
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