The Isolated Single (Stephanie A. Snow)
When I found out eons ago—on March 13, 2020—that I would be working from home “for a few days,” I was initially relieved. I thought it would allow for a bit of rest. Even while maintaining my workload at home, I looked forward to a less hectic pace and maybe a nap here and there. During the six to seven months leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak, I had experienced stress and anxiety connected to transitioning back to Chicago after two years in St. Louis, getting settled at my new place, reengaging in my local church community, and starting a new high-pressured job. I was concerned about COVID-19, but as an introvert and as a single person, I looked forward to time alone on my couch with my cat, some British murder mysteries, and books…all the wonderful books I planned to read.
Then the “few days” turned into weeks. Weeks of single isolation. Weeks without any human contact outside of telephone calls, video chats, and Zoom conferences. Weeks without the face-to-face connections that I crave.
It is true that I’m an introvert, but I’m also a hugger. I’m an introvert, but I love smiles. I’m an introvert, but I’m also an embodied soul. I’m an introvert, but I hate isolation. Dr. Curt Thompson, in his recent article, A Body of Work, puts it like this: “We are dirt, and we are breath; we are embodied and we are spirited. Take either one away and we stop being fully human. And what we are experiencing is the act of living disembodied lives.”
While being single can be challenging on even the sunshine-filled days, the recent two months in isolation has caused me to feel those challenges all the more acutely. In the best of times, singles and those who love them have to be intentional, doggedly so, about connecting with community. How much more in these days of forced separateness! But now there are all of these other considerations—health and safety and, for our married friends with children, juggling kids and exhaustion. In the current COVID -19 crisis, being alone for a single person can quickly induce intense feelings of loneliness and longing.
But in wrestling with my isolation and loneliness, I have also seen glimpses of grace during these past two months, especially as I have shifted my focus to the opportunities particularly available to me as a single person during this time of being alone. I have had opportunities to be still and get quiet, so much so that it has made me realize just how noisy my life had been before the pandemic. I have had time to dream again about my vocation, engage in virtual learning in areas of racial justice and reconciliation, reconnect with a spiritual director, add certain spiritual disciplines to my daily rhythm (including fixed-hour prayer), and yes, read lots of books.
In addition, I have begun something altogether new, incorporating into my spiritual practices the writing of collects—short and succinct prayers that help me direct my heart cries to the One who is able to hear . . . and respond. Here is one example that I wrote just a couple of weeks into being isolated:
O God, you are the One who sees us; we ask that you would meet us in the places of our loneliness, rejection, and feelings of being forgotten; so that we will remember that we are not forgotten by you and that our names are written in the palm of your hand; through Jesus Christ, whose grace is sufficient for each of us. Amen.
As an isolated single, I have experienced all of the emotions connected with being alone while riding out the pandemic. All of them. But what if I—what if we—are being invited into this time as a means of grace, an opportunity to draw near to God, to settle our souls, to experience an abundance of peace, and to get rest from Jesus, who has tasted singleness and promised that we are never isolated from Him?
There is hardship for the isolated single, but also grace upon grace.
Stephanie Snow is a former mentor for The Carver Project and an attorney in Chicago.
Further Reading:
Psalm 56
Hebrews 4:14-16
Sam Alberry, 7 Myths about Singleness (2019)
Phyllis Tickle, The Divine Hours – Pocket Edition (2007)
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