Somebody to love

Hannah (of "When you don't want to dance..." fame) is back with another moving and challenging vignette drawn from her own experience of singleness. I really appreciate being able to host these (true) stories; if you have an idea for a story you'd like to tell, please do let me know - I'd love the selection to grow. (You can find contact details on the 'About' page).

Over to Hannah:



"I just really miss him," Jenny says over a cigarette, for what must have been the hundredth time that week.  She's not supposed to smoke inside.  I look across our kitchen table, the only light that night coming from a bare bulb overhead.

I didn't know, then, how badly she missed him.

Wednesday morning, half past six, and she's lying on the couch as I head out the door.  She's late, I remind her, for that top-secret job she has just south of the District.  "Didn't get any sleep last night," she mumbles, "or the night before."

I didn't understand why.

It wasn't until Thursday night that I understood, or at least start to understand, who my housemate is.  What her heart is, what she needs.  I didn't get it until I stopped to listen.  And then I prayed, and kept listening.

"'Be still my soul'," she says, as I'm putting away my violin for the evening and she's starting a new bottle.  "Do you know 'Be still my soul'?"  

I do.  We hum our way into a key and then I pick out the tune on my fiddle, droning and pacing with all the finesse of a church organ.  Jenny stands and sings, her eyes closed and her voice twice too loud.  It's messy.  It's beautiful.

"Do you know 'The deep deep love of Jesus'?"  I know it, and she surprises me again by knowing more of the words than I do myself.  Over bridge, strings and scroll I watch her swaying and singing from the bottom of her heart.

It's late and I want to put my fiddle away.  But something holds me there in our half-lit living room, with the funny cat picture and the discarded Victoria's Secret magazine and the empty bottles from tonight and the old empty cans from earlier that week.  Something tells me to listen.

Jenny's on her phone now, sitting and switching through various online hymnals on her phone.  "I didn't know you could play all these old songs... We should... Wait."  She looks up.  "I want to show you something."

In a moment she brings out a dusty old folder with some kind of certificate inside.  "Read," Jenny says. 

My eyes fly across the official seal and words which read: U.S. Marines... Distinguished Service... Falljuah... Improvised Explosive Device... Extraordinary Courage... Exemplary Honor... Awarded This Day....

"I didn't know," is all I can think to say, and Jenny accepts it, and waits for me to finish reading.  "I mean, I knew you were a soldier, of course."

"Marine," she corrects me sharply, but then smiles quickly after.  And then comes the story.  Not just about that day - the Awarded This Day - but all the things that came before it and especially all that followed.  The memories, and the lapses in memory.  Sleepless nights.  Drunken nights.  Relationship after relationship to build things back up, and then things falling apart again, and then the drinking again.  

That's why she misses him - her last boyfriend.  Not because he was a great friend.  But because Jenny doesn't really have any friends.

We live with two other girls in our house, I should say - girls whose work is even more demanding than whatever it is Jenny does at six in the morning outside DC.  I don't know where they were that Thursday night, but it's normal for a week to go by without everyone being in the same place at once.  The other girls know Jenny, and what to expect from her - which is not much.  They warned me to expect the same.

I know what they would warn me now: don't imagine you're going to be her only friend.  Don't try to play the hero.  Don't dream you can fix her.

And they'd be right.  I can't do those things.  Only the deep, deep love of Jesus can do those things.

"You need to find a better boyfriend," I open my mouth to say, and then I stop short.  I might just as well say, "Jenny, you need a better job, too.  In fact, you should probably find a more stable place to live, without all that black mold in the shower.  Jenny, you need to drink less.  You need to try to rest more.  You need to let me be your friend and you need to make a lot of other friends and you need to get better."

But what she needs most is Jesus.

"You need to pray," I think, were the words that came out of my mouth then.  And we ended the night in prayer.  I watched the tears fall as my drunken war hero housemate asked God "Why?", and then felt better for having asked, because she was asking in faith, with a friend.

Deep drinking (sometimes) brings deep thoughts, and so by proxy, as it were, I caught myself thinking, as I headed off to bed, "God, if only there were someone I could miss.  Someone who could miss me.  Someone to love."  I had in mind, when I whispered that prayer, a strapping man, somewhere imaginary, someone with a face just like Tom Hiddleston.  An unbelievably insensitive thought, I know, in a moment of such emotional intimacy with my housemate.  It was selfish, short-sighted - and an unavoidable longing for love and companionship in my own life.

"But I've given you people to love," I thought I heard God say.  "Here they are."

I think I saw it somewhere on Pinterest that "You can't save people; you can only love them."  Loving people by the power of the Spirit in the imitation of Christ is what there is for Christians to do in this world.  There is a lot of it to be done and there is not much time to do it all.  God will not be coy about who it is he's asking you to love - to have patience with, to be kind to, to not envy or boast to... He will make that quite clear.

He asks us to believe that his love is sufficient for this endeavor of loving others.  We are asked to believe that he will provide for our needs.  And in this season of seemingly unmet needs of mine, I find myself challenged to believe that what love I receive and give in all my relationships is a blessing from the one who is, himself, Love.  Deep, deep love indeed.


"Oh the deep deep love of Jesus, far surpassing all the rest, 'tis an ocean full of blessing in the midst of every test..."