Let Us Alone
"Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, 'Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.'"
Exodus 14: 12
King James Version
EXPLORATION
"Let Us Alone"
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"The deepest need of man (and woman) is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness."
Erich Fromm
Has there ever been a time in my life when I told God, "Leave me alone?"
How did I feel at that moment?
INSPIRATION
"In all those dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is You who is painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance."
Teilhard de Chardin
It was a Saturday afternoon and I was driving toward the lake that wasn't far from "my home. At the age of 22, I was a confused and lonely girl. Having just broken up with another boyfriend who treated me lousy and wasn't worthy of my affection, I decided some time alone by the lake would help me clear my mind and hopefully sort out the jumbled thoughts racing through my head.
As I contemplated the situation I found myself in, for a fleeting moment, a pang of a guilty conscience pierced me. One unknown writer has said that the word "conscience is when you are aware of something." On the other hand, "conscience" is when you wish you weren't aware of something. In the situation I found myself, I didn't want to feel anything. It hurt too much. What I thought I wanted was to be left alone! I didn't want friends giving me their opinions. I certainly didn't want my parents advice. And as for God, a little distance between us was fine with me.
Have you ever felt this way? Confused and alone? Forgotten and failing? In desperation you screamed inside yourself, "Would everybody just leave me alone?"
Christina Rossetti, one of England's most important woman poets, penned her deeply religious works from the viewpoint of someone whose life was filled with a great deal of suffering. Reoccurring bouts of Grave's Disease left her an invalid and in the end of her life she rarely left home, where she finally passed away at the age of 64. This Godly woman found herself struggling with the "aloneness" we feel within ourselves when life around us seems so dreary and confusing.
This is how she described the feelings which encompassed her:
"God strengthen me to bear myself;
That heaviest weight of all to bear,
Inalienable weight of care.
All others are outside myself;
I lock the door and bar them out,
The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.
I lock the door upon myself,
And bar them out; but who shall
All self from myself, most loathed of all?
Myself, arch-traitor to myself;
My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,
Yet ONE there is can curb myself,
Can roll the strangling load from me,
Break off the yoke and set me free."
If you, like the children of Israel, are ready to scream, "Leave me alone," remember, that while these chain-bound people were telling Moses and God to let them be – let them continue their lives in Pharaoh's bondage – God had already put into motion a plan so bold and miraculous that when implemented, it not only saved His children and destroyed the enemy, but it is a story repeated down through the ages, to this very day, to encourage and strengthen the hearts of God's daughters and sons.
Years ago, sitting beside a beautiful lake, but feeling alone because of the walls I chose to build around myself, from somewhere deep in my heart came the cry of my Father. And in the words of St. Augustine, this call "shattered my deafness." God breathed "His fragrance" into my life and my longing was filled.
"I am His by purchase and I am His by conquest; I am His by donation and I am His by election. I am His by covenant and am His by marriage. I am wholly His; I am peculiarly His; I am universally His; I am eternally His."
Thomas Brooks
AFFIRMATION
Let Me Know Myself
"God of life,
Surge through every cell of my being.
From my core through all that I am,
to all the world that surrounds me.
Through my fears.
My unknowings,
My dreams,
My detachments.
Let me know myself, and simply be.
And from that point, let me reach out to all my complexities,
gently.
lovingly.
I am.
In the great "I AM."
Donna J. Maebori
Your friend,
Dorothy Valcarcel, Author
When A Woman Meets Jesus
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