She Stopped Telling People She Has Nobody

She said it twice, about eighteen months apart, and she has not said it since.

The first time was to a woman she liked, in a kitchen, at the end of a long evening when the honesty had got easier the way it does. She said, quite simply, that she does not have anybody. Not a circle that has thinned. Nobody, in the sense of nobody who would notice if a week went strangely.

And the woman was kind, and then within about ninety seconds she was suggesting things.

There was a group on Thursdays. There was a thing that had started up in the next town. Had she thought about the one for people in her sort of situation, because a friend of hers goes.

All of it was meant well. Every word of it. And what she felt, sitting there, was that she had handed somebody a difficulty and been handed back a list of homework, and that the list was now a second thing to fail at on top of the first.

The second time, eighteen months later, went almost identically with a different person.

So she stopped.

She is fifty-six. She is good company. She is at things, and she helps, and if you asked anybody in her orbit whether she was lonely, most of them would say no, because she is not the shape people expect lonely to be.

And what has settled in her, over about four years, is not bitterness. It is quieter and more permanent than that.

It is a decision that this particular fact about her life is something she carries privately, because saying it out loud produces effort in other people, and their effort makes her responsible for their disappointment when nothing changes.

So she does not say it. And the not saying it has slowly become part of the thing itself, because a fact you cannot mention grows a shell.

And you have something like that. Something true about your life that you tried saying twice, and both times it turned into a task, and you have not raised it since and probably will not.

She was alone in a desert and she named God

There is a woman in Genesis sixteen who is in a genuinely desperate position and completely without anybody, and what happens to her is one of the most remarkable things in the book.

She is not a leader. She is not part of the promise as anybody in that household understands it, and she is running from a situation that had been arranged by other people around her.

She is found by a spring in a wilderness. And after the conversation that follows, she does something that nobody else in Genesis does.

She names God.

So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, "You are a God of seeing," for she said, "Truly here I have seen him who looks after me."Genesis 16:13

She had nobody. She was in a desert. She was the least significant person in the story as far as anybody in that household was concerned.

And she is the first person in Scripture to give God a name, and the name she gives Him is about being seen.

You are seen, and the name for that was given by a woman who had nobody at all. It is written that she called Him a God of seeing, saying truly here I have seen Him who looks after me (Genesis 16:13), and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a name given at a desert spring and makes it land in a stone kitchen at fifty-six.

Now the shell, because that is the part that is growing.

A fact you cannot mention grows a shell. You said that yourself, and it is exactly right, and it is worth understanding what the shell is made of.

It is not shame. You are not ashamed of having nobody, and you would not accept the suggestion that it says something about you, and you are right not to.

The shell is made of consideration. You stopped saying it because saying it created work for other people and then made you responsible for their disappointment, and that is a genuinely thoughtful reason and it is also what has sealed you in.

You are permitted to say the true thing without becoming responsible for what anybody does with it. Scripture says cast your burden on the Lord, and He sustains you (Psalm 55:22), and it is the Holy Spirit who receives a thing said out loud without immediately producing a plan, which is not a service any human being reliably provides.

And the two people, who deserve fairness.

Neither of them did anything wrong. When a person is handed something painful that they cannot fix, the reflex is to reach for something actionable, because sitting with it feels like doing nothing and doing nothing feels like not caring.

They were not dismissing you. They were frightened of being useless, which is a very human thing to be frightened of.

You were not being brushed aside, you were watching two people panic in a kind direction. It is written that we should weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15), which is an instruction most people were never given and would not know how to follow, and it is the Holy Spirit who does it perfectly and without a single suggestion attached.

And now the thing this page absolutely will not do.

It is not going to name a group, or a thing in the next town, or anything for people in your sort of situation. Nothing on this page is a task, and there is no list at the end of it, and nobody here is going to hand a woman who has been alone for years the additional job of arranging her own company.

You are not being given homework, and there is nothing here for you to fail at. Scripture says come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28), and it is His Spirit who gives that rest directly rather than referring a person on.