Lonely

Many years ago, I knew a woman who was married a long time, and she was faithful to her husband until the day that she died, almost.

She longed for more than what she had. Then she thought that she had found what she longed for. It was a man her age who had similar interests. She was a teacher; he was a principal. She liked to golf. So did he.

And he would call her on the phone and read psalms to her. He would ask her what she thought that one psalm or another meant. And he would praise the beauty of the psalms.

They had an affair. It lasted a short time. Then he left her and started up with a PTA president.

In the short time that this woman had an affair with this man, she became deeply attached to him. He walked away, but her attachment to him stayed. She even stalked him. In addition to the attachment, another bi-product of the affair was her unbearable shame. She tried to take her life.

It had been her practice to pray every day. After the affair, when she went to pray, all she could say to God was "I’m sorry."

Within two-or-three years, she was dead. She did not reach the age of retirement before she died. On her deathbed, she confessed to loneliness.

Predators who clothe themselves in godly-seeming garments will always find it easy to take down women and men who long for God but don’t know how to find him, or don’t know that he is what they long for.

The rich find it easy to take down men or women who long for riches. (It is apparently an old saying that if you marry for money, you end up paying for it.)

Or someone might long for a highly-clever person. (I suspect that Russell Brand’s easy wit is what makes him to many women irresistible.) Or a beautiful person. Or a learned person. Or brave. Or famous. The ors could add up.

Statistics on marriage and divorce are kept by the Centers for Disease Control. I mention that without particular comment. The Centers for Disease Control tell us that every year, 6.8 people get married for every thousand persons in America; and 3.6 persons get divorced.

If I understand those statistics, more than half of all American marriages end up in family court. But a broad statistic like that says little. The first line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I've never been married, so I can't say. Nor can I judge any marriage that fails. I know for a fact that if I had married when I was younger, I would not have stayed married. That’s true no matter who I might have married. I was just too selfish.

That said, I believe the ability to live with longing and a willingness for that longing to be unsatisfied while we live is a gift from above. So is patience to channel our longing in a virtuous direction where we don’t necessarily get what we want, but we are at least somewhat satisfied with what we get.

When we burn for something, but we resist it for righteousness’s sake, maybe the smoke from that burning is a fragrance pleasing to God.

To this woman, this love affair drew her like a crackling bonfire on a winter’s night. While it lasted, it was a joy to her. It was less important to her lover. To him, discarding it was like flinging away a cigarette while reaching for another.

Let me say one last thing about the woman of this story. Please remember that she said that all she could pray after the affair was "I’m sorry."

I heard that from her in the time of her dying. Years after, I remembered that she had said that, and I thought of Jesus’s story in Luke 18, about the Pharisee and the tax collector. Both were in the temple. The Pharisee thanked God that he himself was so virtuous, not like other men, and, in particular, not like this tax collector. But the tax collector stood far off. He could not look up. In shame, he cried to God, "Have mercy on me, a sinner!" Jesus said that one of those men was justified before God, but not the other.

And these are words from Psalm 51:"The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." (NRSV.)

I regret that I did not at the time think of this story, and this psalm, to share with this woman.

But I hope that, one day, she will hear them from the lips of an angel.