I Gave Up ‘Solitude’ For Lent (week 1) Make sure you read to the end!

I gave up solitude for Lent and here is how it going. It’s been one week and one day since I began to dig into what this season of Lent means to me. If you would like to go back and read the full terms and conversation that I had around lent, check out my last post here. In a nutshell, I wanted to give up something that gave me comfort that caused me not to rely on Jesus for that feeling.

For me, in this season, solitude has been more like “hiding”. I think that it is more common than we would like to admit, that we rationalize our hiding from community as “I’m an introvert” or for me, I used to say “I’m licking my wounds“. And while I do think that there is a healthy place for pulling away with Jesus, healing, being quiet and still to hear God….For me… right now…. I just felt convicted to lean into it and challenge myself with connection.

What does that look like?  Each day, I have to connect with someone for one hour. There is not much of a format pasts that. Where it is appropriate, we can end the time in prayer. But every time of connection does not have to be formalized or even “religious“.

Of course, as soon as I started this project, I had a pretty significant pain flare and I had some stuff go haywire personally, and it prompted me to “go underground”. I mean. Who wants to hangout with a sad and stressed out guy in pain… am I right?? Well… I still leaned in and connected with people during those days too. It was not easier… But it was better. Better for me, better for my kid, and dare I say better for the people that I connected with. Matter fact, as a transition to a time of reflection about my connections in the last week, I can confidently say that every single time I connected with someone so far, it has been mutually beneficial to myself and to them. Even when I was at my worst.

Reflections -

Here are some reflections that I don’t want to forget from my first 8 days of giving up solitude for Lent.

When you connect more, you get more feedback:

I know, right? Sounds like “duh”… but one thing that’s personally difficult for me has been that, as I write or share, sometimes it feels like it drifts off into a hollow vortex of space. I rarely get feedback on my writing or SHAREing that in the form of interaction or comments or even “hey this sucks”. And here’s the funny thing… most of the time, that’s totally fine with me. I know that I need to be careful what I ask for in this department because one day internet trolls are going to find me and decimate hours/days/weeks of work by picking apart things as trivial as where I use punctuation… not to mention my theology. I do realize that is on the other side of being able to get feedback.

However, zero feedback on most pieces that I write, is also quite discouraging sometimes. I have always said that I just want to write for the one person that needs to hear what I have to say on that particular day. What I have realized, is that, more often than not, you have to find yourself in conversation with that one person to arrive at the fact that I reached my listener. My takeaway has been that I have felt more encouraged about my SHAREing. I think it’s helping some people… and that’s why I want to do it in the first place.

Someone else gets to hold the mirror up for you:

To me, this is very different than feedback because it is honest reflection. Unless somehow you have meta morphed into the most perfect human on the planet, we need people around us that are willing to hold the mirror up for us. Not everybody, but somebody in your life should have some permissions to reflect on what they see in here from you.  Equally as important, is our responsibility to lovingly reflect for others. Because of this practice of giving up solitude, I was able to do that for someone else this week. She has been someone that has held up a mirror for me plenty of times and in this one situation, she needed someone to hold up her mirror and I was able to do that.

I think that a lot of times I have not wanted to be seen because of Shame. I was ashamed of what people would see in my brokenness or failures. But what I would urge you to do if you feel some sort of pushback around being seen… Explore that… For yourself. It is either shame, and you are afraid of what people will see of your brokenness… or it is pride… And you don’t think anyone else deserves the power to reflect back what they see in you. Neither one is healthy and both things cause you to drift further from God‘s grace.

Sometimes… when you feel lonely… it’s because YOU haven’t given permission for anyone to be close:

This one sucks… truly sucks. Because what it means is that “my loneliness is my responsibility”… and I want to blame this shit on someone else SO bad. The fact that “they forgot about me” REALLY means… “I stopped showing up” … just feels like a hard pill to swallow. Especially when you are feeling the loneliness and depression. You just want to feel better… not necessarily take accountability for something bad that you are feeling. Because that might make you feel even worse.

Listen, I get it. I do. I was helped through this by my friends Ben and TaraMae. They had mentioned to me before that if I needed a ride to the store (or whatever)…just ask! Well… day 3 of my severe pain, I hadn’t left the house in days and I had barely left my bed…. I decided to give them permission to be close, and I asked for a ride to the grocery store. An hour and 15 minutes later, I was in there car on the way to the grocery store. They really meant it. The timing worked. They showed up for me.

So often I wouldn’t have asked. So often I would have been overwhelmed by all the shitty and painful details of the day that I would have been in a mood that wouldn’t feel good enough to WANT to be around people. But I leaned in.

I don’t know if or what I added to their day… but I did give them a good recommendation for a specialty grocery store where they can get some good kimchi and saki! (H-Mart, in Chicago)

Sometimes, your willingness to connect is what you both needed…

My last reflection really shook something up inside of me. I actually had NO idea that I was about to have a connection at this time. I was actually getting to my desk to do something completely different and I just felt a strong reminder that I wanted to check in with a person I had met a while back. We only met once, on a phone call when I ordered some goat for my Birria recipe, about a month back. I had wanted to check in and see how I could pray for her. So I just … called. The reason I didn’t think it was going to “count as a connection” was because I kinda thought I’d call… be awkward… “hey. Remember me? Thought about you and wanted to see how I could pray for you. Ok byeeeee 👋🏽 “ I thought for SURE it was going to be awkward. If she answered… she’d be at work… so obviously it would have to be quick.

Well guys…. an hour and a half later, I ended one of the best random calls I’ve ever been compelled to make. She is Muslim. I am Christian. And we talked about God and faith and prayer and just…. Incredible things for an hour and a half. It was incredible. I learned SO much about Islam. I took notes. There are things that I know God put us on that call to discuss. I know that God is pleased with us for SHAREing our faith boldly and yet so gently. At one point I said “that sounds like your cross to bare” and then I was like… oops… well… maybe not your cross to bare. It’s your burden.” We laughed. We both knew that we weren’t there to hurt or offend or attack or depreciate anything that the other believes. We mutually exchanged vulnerabilities and prayer requests.

I needed the reminders that she shared with me. She needed the reminders that I shared with her.

Did I say that I took notes?? lol. Because I did. And it was a beautiful exchange of two believers SHAREing how good God is and how much He has been there for us. One of my favorite things to hear from her has become a theme of the week:

We can do all the ‘religious’ things in the world and read all the faith books and attend all the religious services and watch all the podcasts that we want to… but if what we learn doesn’t translate into the way we walk out our faith, then we’re missing the whole point. God cares about what you do when no one is looking. He cares about how you treat others and sometimes, the fruit of your faith has to show up most when the world treats you the worst.

God put us here to connect with each other… I couldn’t be happier with what I’ve been able to experience, so far.

Here’s to the next few weeks!! 🍻