Alone is Something You’ll be Quite a Lot

"All Alone, whether you like it or not, alone is Something You’ll be Quite a Lot"

 It’s a line from Dr. Seues’s  “Oh the Places You’ll Go”, a speech he gave for a graduation and now a book gifted to graduates everywhere. I read it to my children often and it has so many pearls of good advice. But this line, like those catchy Dr. Suess phrases do, replays through my head often. Not because it’s true, but because it’s one line in the book that isn’t. 

I’ll admit when I first read it I nodded right along, thinking how absolutely right he is, recounting the many times in my life I’ve been alone. But the reality is, when I remember those times, I only FELT alone. I wasn’t actually alone.

The devil would really like us to believe we are alone, because being together is what we were created for. Together, we will thrive and help each other and withstand temptation, and pick each other up when we fall. Alone, we fall in a rut of beating ourselves up. “No one sins this badly,” we think. “No one suffers the way we do. No one else is forgotten about like we are. No one else can possibly understand.” And that guilt drives us further from God, and further from each other.

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I had one of those really bad mom days. The kind where the day seems already lost before 8 am. The kids all wake up to early and this has turned them into tiny monsters that look just like my children but cannot be reasoned with or even bribed with candy out of their bad moods. They’ll proceed to torture me and each other all day long. These are the days when even though they all need 3 hour naps and I REALLY need them to take a 3 hour nap, no one will nap at the same time and they’ll all be less than an hour and probably wake up crabbier than before. And the real problem is probably not that they are any more crabby than a normal day, but instead that I did not get enough sleep or am worrying about something else and instead am a monster version of myself trying to play mom of five kids who needs to be patient and understanding and instead is only reacting and not playing or engaging.  And when one of those days starts with a diaper blow out or a bowl of cereal milk splattered across the room or a tantrum about watching TV, the combination is ugly. All day long, I reached for my phone to send a message to my friend, but each time I put it down. “She doesn’t need my problems, she’s got a lot going on right now. Leave this ugliness here at our house, and let them have a good day, “ I told myself. Thankfully, kids bedtime came, moms bedtime immediately after, and the next day was a million times better. Always is. When I was happier, I texted my friend, who then proceeded to tell me what a horrible day she had the day before.

OH. So there we were both feeling alone and horrible and struggling and not wanting to bother anyone with our yuckiness, when it probably would have snapped both of us out of it to just know the other was going through the same exact thing. To hear encouragement from each other instead of the negativity we were saying to ourselves.

Alone is something you will FEEL quite a lot, but alone is rarely ever something you will actually be. Somewhere, probably somewhere incredibly close to you, someone else is struggling with the same things you are. The devil would not like you to encourage each other and lift each other up, so you’ll be tempted to stay quiet, stay home, keep your problems to yourself. But God put us together for a reason.

And God often has put people in my life who are struggling with the same things, and I know this is so we can help each other. When Dan and I were in our early years of marriage struggling with infertility and pregnancy loss, God placed two new co-workers at my work who were suffering in the same way. Of course we could have never shared those things with each other, but instead we did and found a safe place to share our struggle with people who understood. All three of us continued our journey to adoption, not a coincidence but God’s beautiful plan. Together we were able to help each other see how we could turn broken into beautiful, something it’s hard to see sometimes looking only at ourselves.

But even though there might be people out there who share our struggles, sometimes they don’t feel Has close as we’d like. Right now, I’m wondering every day if I’m going to have to say goodbye to my ten month old baby. Logic tells me that other people have probably done this, and yet it feels so impossible and none of those people are sitting around my kitchen table giving me advice for how to cope with this. Sometimes, I feel like the only person in the world that knows what it’s like to have three toddlers 6 and 9 months apart. I know people have had triplets and quadruplets and multiple sets of twins close together or others just like me have adopted so many kids in this crazy age range, but they aren’t here sticking up for me when I turn down another social outing because it’s in a public place and it would just be too hard to take everyone there myself.  

Or how many of us when we have continued to grow in our Christian faith, have then felt isolated from our old friends and family, because we have changed, and maybe they have, maybe they haven’t, but the relationship just isn’t the same?

Sometimes, we really do feel alone. But the second and really big reason Dr. Suess was wrong, is because Jesus tells us that even when there is no one else around, we are never alone:

 “I will not leave you orphaned, I am coming to you.”

“I will ask the Father and He will send you another advocate.”

“ And behold I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Even when we feel we are the only one, He is there joining in our struggle. He is there walking beside us, hoping to encourage us, support us, give us strength and courage. The devil would really like us to feel alone because he wants us to believe that God has abandoned us, especially in our time of need.


But God is there as He promises He will be, this we know in the core of our very being.  And when we hold on to that promise, when we are confident in His presence, then there is no struggle that we cannot face. There is nothing that we cannot endure.

This is Bella tossing rocks into Lake Superior on our recent trip to Duluth. She is so tiny facing this very big lake, but she wasn't ever scared, because she always knew we were right behind her. What power comes in knowing your Father is always there. What incredible things could we do if we were always so aware of this! 

You are not alone. Not today, not on your worst day and not on your best. Let a new phrase repeat in your soul in place of Dr. Suess: “I am with you always, until the end of the age.”