Solitude

It's funny how sometimes Green Day can get you thinking... 

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

Sometimes, you go through life and it seems as though, whether by choice or circumstances around you, there is nowhere else to turn but solitude. What is solitude?

1.the state of being or living alone; seclusion: to enjoy one's solitude.

2.remoteness from habitations, as of a place; absence of human activity: the solitude of the mountains.

3.a lonely, unfrequented place: a solitude in the mountains. (Taken from dictionary.com)

Solitude can be somewhere you end up or somewhere you choose to go. For me, it is a little of both based on where I am at in life right now. 

It's also not what some people think. Solitude does not mean isolation, or lonely. Yes, the place you are in may be lonely (for example, uninhabited); it does not mean that the person experiencing solitude is lonely. More often than not, solitude is sought out from the craziness that whirls on around us constantly. 

Downtown St. Louis, life flying by

Even Jesus sought out solace frequently. On the night of his arrest, he went to Gethsemane, to a garden of olive trees. Overcome with the turmoil in his heart, he sought out being alone with his Father.

 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.”  He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled.  Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me." Matthew 26: 36-38, NLT, The Bible

 He took a time out, by him self, to seek quiet time with God and sort things out. He prayed three times- well into the night, while the disciples who were supposed to be staying up with him slept- and when he was finished, he woke them up, and said it was time for him to be turned over. 

The oldest olive tree in the garden, 30 AD

In the book of Thessalonians, we find that the church at Thessalonica had been  meddling in each others business, and Paul encouraged them in this way:

 "Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before.  Then people who are not Christians will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others." 1st Thessalonians 4:11-12, NLT, The Bible

As a society, we have become so wrapped up into he-said-she-said garbage, and have lost sight of taking care of our own business. Follower of Christian teachings or not,  the above quotation really strikes a chord. So much of time time, we forget what life is about: not the latest gossip, but tending to your own issues, your own marriage, and learning to live in a way that people respect you for what you are about. 

On a night where so much is swirling in my head about new lives coming in to the world, job issues, broken families, quarreling, when I will catch up on my house, the bills that need paid, the bills that quite frankly won't get paid, and on and on and on... I will choose to turn to solitude. I will choose to take my cup of tea, turn off my phone ringer, take my book of choice to bed, and read until my eyes are bleary. I will choose to consult with my Creator, Confidant, and Counselor, rather than wallow in my troubles. 

After all, when I take my solitude and am confident that God has everything under control, I can be a woman who "always faces tomorrow with a smile." Just what I am aiming for, a Proverbs 31 kind of woman.