solitude

Isolation is not solitude and God is good

One of the reasons the c-vid lockdowns were so hard on me personally is that it is very easy for me to stay home for extended periods of time without leaving the house or interacting with anyone else. Isolation is my default state. And it’s simply not healthy. 

It takes a lot of effort, and has taken a lot of spiritual work, for me to want to be around other people. Left to my own devices, I would much rather hide. With food, water, and electricity, I would gladly stay in the house for long periods of time with no interactions with the outside world. In fact, the longer I stay in, the less I want to or am capable of going out. 

I’m not talking about solitude. Solitude is a healthy spiritual state wherein a person seeks God in the quiet, alone times. I’m talking about isolation. I’m talking about turning my back on God and my fellows. 

Isolation is not about pursuing one’s spiritual depths in a quiet place. Isolation is the unhealthy practice of disconnecting with the world in order to be alone with oneself. In solitude, I practice transcending self. In isolation, I obsess over self. 

The c-vid lockdowns, for me, were about forced isolation. They exacerbated my anxiety, i.e. “self-centered fear,” and amplified my fears and insecurities around socializing. Perhaps most importantly, however, the lockdowns gave me an excuse to revert back to the agoraphobia and paranoia I had spent so many years trying to overcome. 

Outside of the spiritual work I had done, which by time c-vid hit I had largely fallen away from, martial arts, specifically Brazilian jiu-jitsu had become a major social outlet for me. In addition to being great exercise for the body and mind, jiu-jitsu was the place I went to be around other people and to connect in a healthy, positive way. But just like that, I was no longer allowed to do jiu-jitsu and I began withdrawing back into isolation. 

Before I had to stop doing it, I don’t think I fully comprehended how important jiu-jitsu had become to my life. It was where I pushed myself physically, stretched myself mentally, and where I saw and interacted with my friends in the second most intimate way I believe one person can interact with another. 

As soon as I realized that our academy was going to be shut down, I began to feel my old self creeping back in. My life started to feel like it was collapsing in on me, my connection to the outside world was being broken, and I started having anxiety attacks. 

I can honestly say that emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, the lockdowns were one of the most challenging times of my life. So much of the spiritual and psycho-emotional progress I had made over the previous years all seemed to disappear in the blink of an eye. But it was not all bad. 

The lockdowns forced me to take a look at myself and where the foundation I had built for myself in previous years was not as sturdy as it needed to be if I were going to thrive into the future. If I’m being honest, it broke me, but in this brokenness, I began to pray. I began asking God to take away the things that I was holding onto that were blocking me from being the person he wanted and needed me to be. And God answered my prayers. 

Over the course of several years, what was at first brokenness turned out to be exactly the spiritual death I needed in order to be reborn as God would have me. I began seeing a therapist who helped me reconnect with my spiritual path. I reconnected with the religion of my childhood, Christianity, in a new, deeper, and more personal way. I refocused my efforts on being healthier, both physically and mentally, being a better husband and father, and being a better teacher and mentor, both in jiu-jitsu and in other aspects of my life. 

As the result of this transformation, now when I am alone, it is not isolation, but solitude because I know that I am not actually alone. God is with me and much of my alone time is in pursuit of a better relationship with him. But I also appreciate even more the time I get to spend with others, whether it be at jiu-jitsu or with my wife and daughter. 

In the end, as much as I resisted the lockdowns, everything that caused them, and all of the consequences of them, some of which we are still feeling, they helped me to see that God is ultimately in charge. He uses even the worst circumstances to draw us closer to him if we are willing, and his love does not stop pouring out into our lives simply because the world shuts down. As St. Teresa of Avila said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Please use your inner voice

My daughter had a dance performance at school to day. It was the result of a week-long special program brought into her school where the kids were taught different dance styles from the 1900’s, spanning from the 1910’s through the 1990’s. I have to say, having been born in the late 1970’s, hearing people refer to that era as “the 1900’s” definitely made me feel old. It’s hard to believe that there are twenty five year olds who were born in the year 2000, but I suppose that is how every aging person feels at one point or another. 

Where was I? Oh yeah. My daughter had a dance performance at school today which my wife and I were planning to attend. My sister-in-law was also going, and my wife and her were going to ride together because they had plans to go out after. 

The performance wasn’t until early afternoon, so I went to jiu-jitsu class in the morning. When I was leaving class, I got a text from my wife that said her sister was at our house and she was taking a nap in my daughter’s room. She then sent me a text that said, “When you come home, please use your inner voice.” 

English is my wife’s second language and, while she speaks, reads, and writes it as well as most Americans, sometimes she mixes up slang or common American sayings. In this case, she clearly intended to say, “When you come home, please use your inside voice,” and I knew what she meant. Still, her actual words caught my attention. 

While it is sometimes necessary for me to be told to “use my inside voice” because I can get rather excited and, with that excitement, my volume tends to increase without me realizing it, I can honestly say that I’ve never been told to “use my inner voice before,” at least not in those words. That said, if I’m being honest, it felt less like a typo or misunderstanding, and more like a sign. It’s something I needed to read and it’s been on my mind all day. 

We could all do well to use our inner voice more often. I know I could. There are so many instances every day where that quiet whisper of God is drowned out by the world or by my own selfishness, pride, fears, and desires. Temptations are loud, obtrusive, and easy to give in to. 

We don’t have to practice listening to temptation. It will gladly impose itself on us without any effort on our part. Listening to our inner voice, on the other hand, requires a great deal of discipline, effort, and time. This is why practicing silence is so important, why meditation or contemplative prayer are essential components of the spiritual journey. Without making time for silence, without making time for listening to God, we may find that our inner voice is too quiet to hear when we need it most. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Making time to love God and my fellows

Having a disciplined prayer life is essential if we want to establish and maintain a relationship with God. Prayer is the act of momentarily forgetting the world in order to put our mind on God. It is a decision to leave everything else behind so that, even if for a moment, we may seek union with our creator, to spend time with him, and to get to know him. 

While God is constantly reaching out for us whether we know it or not, it is up to us to reach back to make the connection. We cannot manufacture grace or salvation through effort, but we can develop a relationship with the source of grace and the giver of salvation. We have to do some of the work.

By setting aside time for God, we are telling him that he is important to us, that our relationship with him matters. This will mean that other things are going to have to wait. If our relationship with God is our priority, we must act like it. 

This is not easy to do. There are an infinite number of distractions in this life vying for us to choose them over God. When the world is not trying to get our attention, our own minds come up with things to worry about, to desire, or obsess over. It is as if we are wired for an inattention on God. 

This morning in prayer, for example, my daughter, my wife, and my phone were all trying to draw me away from God. None of it was malicious, except maybe the phone. I’m becoming ever more convinced that my phone and everything it represents it a tool of the devil, but I digress. 

My daughter and my wife were not even trying to get my attention. I do my best to take care of them and, in turn, they try to respect my prayer time. It’s just that I could hear them getting ready for school and work, respectively, and my mind started to wander away from God and toward what I could do to help them or to get involved with their interactions. 

They didn’t even need my help. I had already made breakfast for my daughter and her lunch was made the night before. She was fully dressed and everything was packed for school. My wife was simply doing her own thing and getting herself ready for work. Everything was fine, but my mind insisted upon engaging with them which meant not being open to receive God’s quiet presence. 

My own brain was trying to keep me away from God and my silent prayer. It wanted to do anything but sit still in God’s presence. It told me that, by sitting quietly in prayer I was being a bad father, a negligent husband, and that I was being selfish. Again, neither my daughter nor my wife actually needed me. 

I had already done my part for my family before sitting down to pray and they were perfectly fine in that moment without me, but my mind rebelled at the silence and rejected the idea that I could simply be still for a while and allow God to be God. But this was my prayer time. That means, before I even sat down, it was decided that all I was going to do for the next hour was to pray, read, and pray some more. 

This decision, made long before I even sat down, meant that, no matter what excuses and distractions my mind wanted to come up with, this was prayer time. This was as true today as it was the day before and as it was the day before that. Also, God willing and barring any emergencies or catastrophes, it will be equally true tomorrow. 

I am not a naturally disciplined person. That is why I have to have a dedicated time for prayer. If not, I will simply never get around to it, at least not with the attention and intention it deserves. For me, my prayer time has to be pre-established so that I have no excuses. In fact, I don’t even have to think about it. 

I don’t pray when and if I feel like it, although sometimes I do that also, but because it is time to pray. Because I made the decision once, I don’t have to make it again. I pray at prayer time. By being disciplined in this way, not only is my prayer life improved, but I have also found that the world can actually get along just fine without me for a while. 

Life doesn’t stop going simply because I am praying. The world keeps spinning and the clock continues to tick. What does happen, however, by having an established, disciplined prayer schedule, is that I slow down. 

By being disciplined about my time with God, by regularly practicing stillness in his presence, I am telling him that my relationship with him is important, that even if only for this one hour every day, I am able to love God with all of my heart, soul, and mind. This, in turn, makes me more loving toward my fellows. In the end, isn’t this the most important thing any of us can do, to love God and each other? Isn’t this worth our time? 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Outgrowing our spiritual travel companions

On the spiritual path, as we ascend toward God, we will have to let people go along the way. No matter how close we may be to them or how big of an influence someone may have had on us, not everyone is meant to be our spiritual travel companion forever. We all have to make our own decisions in life and God will call us in different directions. 

It can be painful parting ways. Some people have literally helped to shape our hearts. The impact and impression made by them on our lives can be deep and long-lasting. If we have loved them, we will experience grief, sorrow, and even anger or disbelief when it is time to part, but when it’s time to let go, it’s time to let go. 

God will not allow us to hold onto that which is no longer for us. If we try, we only make things worse and prolong our suffering. We are asked, especially in times like these, to have faith, to trust that our Heavenly Father truly loves us and wants what is best for us. 

It helps to remember, although it can be difficult to do so when we are in pain, that we are never really alone. No matter how lonely we get, no matter how hopeless we may feel, God is always with us. All we have to do is reach out for help and his loving hand will be there to guide us through whatever darkness we find ourselves in. 

As we move with and toward God, we will inevitably change. This means our relationships will change also. Like a butterfly breaking free from the chrysalis that once contained and nourished it, we must shrug off our old selves and our old relationships as God calls us to grow closer to him. 

If we have friends and family who are willing and able to grow with us, we should consider ourselves fortunate because the spiritual path is often one of solitude, even when we are not actually alone. Prayerful solitude should lead us back to community, however. Spiritual community helps to form, guide, and motivate us through the darkest nights when we feel lost, scared, and forsaken. Our spiritual community may not be who we expected or even desired, but they will be who we need. Our Heavenly Father always provides. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox.