Watching an old episode of Enterprise, I’m slowly getting warmer. I'd draped a throw over the electric heater like a tent and am curled underneath. The space between the blanket and my neck create a chimney where lovely warm air wafts past my face. And I’m starting to feel cozy when Asriel shows up and drapes herself across my lap, flattening the blanket.
I now have a cat on my lap and this is a wonderful thing. But my feet are cold and the rest of me is cool. She's stretched out along the crease between my trunk and my bent knees. And I'd pet her except that then my hand would freeze in the cold room. Besides it's so seldom that this youngster is still when she's awake that I hate to disturb her.
During a break in the action on the screen, I occurs to me that this experience is rather like being partnered. It's a give-and-take. You need to watch your iron intake; they want beef all the time. Yet you (both, hopefully!) care enough that either you sometimes eat beef and they sometimes eat chicken, or you prepare two separate meals. (A simplistic example.)
How do we ever manage? And am I truly interested in going back to such an arrangement, should the opportunity ever present itself? I think of 25 years of sleepless night time hours because of someone's snoring. Now I sleep easily and well. If you're partnered, you can surely make a list of all the things that annoy you or make your life challenging.
The lone individuals are divided between those who love using the whole bed and squeezing the toothpaste any which way and those who grieve their aloneness, longing, if not for the annoyances then at least the companionship of someone to share their days.
The apostle Paul gets some things wrong in his letters – even in this chapter of Romans – but he’s right that “singleness might well be the best thing” for some who are living alone (7:8 Msg). Some.
Yes, singleness can be a good thing, but it’s hard. So is marriage. (And we can experience loneliness, which I'm not writing about today, in either state.)
Where does this leave us? I guess we just keep working at it – whatever “it” is for us, whatever our situation. For myself, I’ve been practicing contentment since leaving my marriage. I’m not brilliant by a long stretch, but I’ve gotten better. If I’m alone except for cats for the rest of my days, I intend to practice finding and creating joy and peace. If this aloneness ends and I'm again partnered, I'll make it my life’s practice to live in acceptance and contentment. And I’ll work to know joy (and peace) each day.
Shalom! (May you know God's peace.)
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