The Lonely Places

Going from one kid to two this past April felt like going from Disneyland to a history museum. Motherhood turned serious.

I wasn’t just living my same twenty-something life and toting around my lone, adorable baby to coffee shops. For a while, I tried to keep going like nothing had changed, but it proved exhausting and resulted in two weeks of migraines. I woke up to the fact that my vocation isn’t the somewhat casual undertaking it seemed with only one son.

And ever since then, since Ezra was born, I’ve felt Jesus inviting me to the lonely place with him—the lonely place of mothering my 2 ½-year-old and 8-month-old, the lonely place of staying in the present moment—as he does His disciples in Mark: “Come away with me, by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while.”¹ 

At first, I didn’t believe that motherhood could really be a place of rest, especially not motherhood at this stage. But I believe it now, and I’m just beginning to see what it looks like.

Here's a question for you: when was the last time you actually sat down with your kids at lunch, pulled up a chair in front of the heating vent or sunlight coming in the window, and ate with them in the middle of the day? Didn’t have your phone out, didn’t wipe up the counters, didn’t consider what you were going to make for dinner or give into worry, but I mean actually sat and ate with them, and marveled at their little hands and their eyes and remembered when you birthed them or when you adopted them or when you stole them? Or when was the last time, when your babies were completely occupied, you didn’t head straight for the next task on your to-do list but instead just watched them, or picked up a novel, or took a nap?

Because these moments of rest and beauty are actually being held up for us throughout our days, like little candles. They actually are, but we miss them because we’re addicted to efficiency and productivity and being seen, to cleaning and to Instagram, instead of to hiddenness and to love. We’re afraid of becoming nothing, or at least I am, if we admit that, possibly, this time of motherhood could be a time of rest.

Instead, I almost always refuse the gift of the lonely place because there’s a moon-sized chance that I’ll be forgotten by the world, and if that doesn’t bother me then there’s a chance my house won’t even be relatively clean the next time a guest pops over, and that might be worse.

But in offering me the possibility of the lonely place, I really think that God is asking to give me the desires of my heart. The translation is this, though: he’s asking me to die. "What do you want to do, Shannon? Not what do you think you want to do, but what do you really want to do?," he asks. And this has mortified me. Because it’s come to my attention that what I truly want to do, in the deepest crevices of my meaty heart, requires dying to myself, my false self, shaking off vanity and people pleasing, and being alone with my screaming, suckling, happy, poopy children a lot.

Dying is scary and hard. But really, living halfheartedly is harder in the long run. I’ve been doing a lot of things that I haven’t actually wanted to do, my whole life, and a lot of things that the Lord probably did not require of me, out of a feeling of obligation, of trying to earn my place. He’s not about that, though, so I’ve been wrestling with him these past few months. How could I possibly do what I want?  It feels selfish. I just couldn’t.

But... if I could, I would stop saying 'yes' so much to people, and I would stop going to Walmart so much. I would stop googling the details of life, and I would stop filling my time to the brim, so that I might be able to read more and rest more and not be horrible to my husband. What’s more, I would prioritize having enough energy for good sex! I would make real lunches for my own nourishment! And I would take my boys to the woods weekly, just so they could meander and putter through streams! 

It's true.

Listen, have you ever let a two-year-old boy lead you through the woods? The answer to that is almost as vital as, do you believe that Jesus is Lord? In fact, a first affirmative may very well lead to a second affirmative answer. There’s nothing in all the world as breathtaking. The trees and the streams are brilliant, but add a toddler who understands what it means to delight in the nature of God, and it can knock you out. You will never find a better example of the fact that “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free”².

Here's the trade-off, though: freedom usually looks foolish.

Ah, and there’s the guts of it. It’s not always that I can’t do the things that would make my heart overflow, woo me into rest and turn my grumbling into worship; it’s that I’m not willing to do them because of fear that’s rooted in pride.

That colossal opponent of fear—love!—is always rooted in humility³. That is why, when I humble myself, when I “delight myself in the Lord,” He gives me the desires of my heart⁴. Because I can’t recognize the desires of my heart when I’m walking in pride, when I'm fearful of how I will look to other people or fearful of what God will make of me when I'm not armed with defenses.

But when I’m rooted and grounded in love, in Jesus, I can “ask for whatever I want and it will be given to me”⁵. I know this is true because the things that I truly want are hidden even from me. They are Easter eggs that God himself has hidden, and the only way for me to find them after I’ve been looking in every wrong place is to go to him, ask, and let him lead me to the garden where he buried them, chuckling.

The Lord, I have discovered, is in me—in and through and around all of me, and I am never alone, which is why I don't need to fear the lonely place of motherhood. In fact, this has been a desire of my heart all along—to give everything for my kids, to be rested, to go slowly, to let the Spirit of Jesus cultivate something veiled in me that is only his—but it will happen in the deserted place.

That is why I’m calling this blog “The Clearing.” A clearing is hidden in the woods; it is a space to be cultivated; it is a respite from travel. I find myself going to the woods often, where nothing is hurried, where I can take the time to wander and be filled. I am “asking for the ancient paths, asking where the good way is to find rest for my soul”⁶. In the lonely places, on the ancient path, in the clearing… there is no rush.

Are you coming, too?

¹ Mk. 6:31  
² Gal. 5:1  
³ 1 Jn. 4:18  
⁴ Ps. 37:4  
⁵ Jn. 15:7  
⁶ Jer. 6:16