Fear of Being Alone

What Sourdough Has Taught Me About Accepting Solitude

The school bus started making its way through my neighborhood again this week.

I noticed it one morning while I was standing in my kitchen.

There was a time when the beginning of a school year dictated nearly everything.

School calendars.

Back-to-school shopping.

Sports schedules.

Practices.

Games.

Vacations carefully planned around school breaks.

Meals.

Appointments.

Graduations.

There was always somewhere someone needed to be.

I hear empty nesters talk often about the silence that arrives when that season ends.

The house changes.

The sounds of family no longer echo through the rooms.

There are no backpacks dropped by the door.

No practices to get to.

No school calendar sitting on the desk determining where everyone will be for the next nine months.

No dinner to plan around different schedules.

And eventually, there comes a realization.

The house is quiet.

I have been thinking about that lately.

Perhaps the school bus had something to do with it.

The Quiet

I have never really been afraid of being alone.

Maybe that's because, for most of my life, I wasn't.

I was someone's daughter.

Then someone's wife.

Then a mother raising four children.

There was always movement around me.

Always another person in the house.

Always another responsibility.

Always noise.

Today, my life looks very different.

I am sixty-five years old.

And for the first time in my life, I am truly, physically alone.

There is something interesting about finally being able to say that without attaching sadness to it.

Because I don't feel alone.

I live alone.

Those are not the same thing.

It has taken me some time to understand the difference.

Solitude

There was a time when I might have thought solitude meant absence.

Now I think it means space.

Space to listen.

Space to pray.

Space to think.

Space to notice.

Space to become comfortable with the sound of my own life.

My mornings are quiet.

I wake before the rest of the world seems to be moving.

I pray.

I read Scripture.

Sometimes I listen to the Word.

I journal.

I drink my coffee.

And somewhere nearby, there is usually a jar of sourdough starter quietly doing what sourdough starter does.

Living.

Changing.

Becoming.

There is something deeply comforting about that rhythm.

The Company of Bread

Sourdough is not loud work.

There are long stretches when nothing appears to be happening.

You feed the starter.

Then you wait.

You mix the dough.

Then you wait.

You fold it.

And wait again.

Fermentation asks for patience.

It also asks for presence.

You cannot rush it simply because you would prefer something to happen.

You learn to stay.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest things sourdough has taught me about solitude.

How to stay.

Not how to fill every quiet space.

Not how to distract myself from silence.

How to inhabit it.

There is a difference.

I don't need noise simply because the house is quiet.

I don't need another person in the room to make the room feel full.

I can stand at my kitchen counter with flour on my hands and dough beneath them and feel completely present in my own life.

That has been an unexpected gift.

Never Really Alone

My faith has deepened enormously during this season.

Perhaps solitude created room for that too.

There are fewer voices competing for my attention now.

And in the quiet, I have learned to listen differently.

My prayers have changed.

My relationship with God has changed.

Not because He suddenly appeared when the house became quiet.

God has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I simply hear Him differently now.

Maybe that's what solitude has given me.

Not God's presence.

An awareness of it.

That distinction matters to me.

Because when I say I am physically alone, I am not saying my life is empty.

Quite the opposite.

My life feels remarkably full.

There are customers who have become friends.

Friends who have become family.

People who gather around my market table.

Conversations that happen because someone came looking for a loaf of bread.

There is writing.

There is prayer.

There is service.

There is work I love.

There is God.

And yes...

There is bread.

Lots and lots of bread.

A Different Kind of Full

I think we sometimes measure the fullness of our lives by how many people are standing in the room.

I don't anymore.

A full life can also be a quiet one.

Perhaps especially so.

There is something beautiful about reaching a place where silence no longer needs to be filled.

Where an evening at home doesn't feel like something is missing.

Where solitude isn't something to escape.

It becomes something to receive.

I don't know whether I would have understood that twenty years ago.

I certainly wasn't living a life that allowed much room for it.

But this season has asked something different of me.

To stay.

To listen.

To trust.

To become comfortable in my own company.

To recognize God's presence without needing Him to announce Himself.

And once again, sourdough has become the unlikely teacher.

Feed.

Wait.

Watch.

Trust.

Stay.

Every. Single. Day.

Maybe that's what accepting solitude looks like for me.

Not learning how to be alone.

Learning that I never really was.

The house is quieter now.

The school bus comes and goes without anyone from this house climbing aboard.

There are no school calendars on my desk.

No practices to get to.

No back-to-school shopping waiting for me.

That season is complete.

And there is something beautiful about being able to honor it without wishing myself back into it.

Because another season arrived.

Quieter.

Slower in some ways.

Fuller in others.

And I am learning not to fear the quiet.

I am learning to live inside it.

To listen inside it.

To pray inside it.

To bake inside it.

And perhaps most importantly...

To recognize that solitude isn't the absence of a life.

It can be the place where we finally become fully present for the one we have.

Warmly,

Kathy
Art of The Crumb