Confessions of a Loner: Part 2
Sophia Lee | Out of a loner mentality, into an inconvenient community
This Mid-Week Edition of Ecstatic features Sophia Lee
This is Part 2 of a longform feature, with Part 1 posted this past Sunday
David and I got married on April 10, 2020, at the dawn of COVID-19 social distancing mandates. A month earlier, the world had shut down. Schools and churches closed. Gyms and movie theaters shuttered. Even playgrounds and beaches were taped off.
We were married in David’s backyard in front of God, our pastor, and a camera through which our friends and family witnessed our vows. Our “reception” was on Zoom, and David and I dined on Uber Eats sushi. On the screen of our iMac, my mother-in-law looked miserable; my father-in-law cried, but not from joy.
I didn’t mind too much. We saved thousands of dollars. Nobody could tell my makeup was hideous or that I wore sneakers under my dress. Besides, wasn’t a wedding about the love and commitment between husband and wife? So what if, when the Zoom window closed, we were suddenly alone in our house for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, and months after? A marriage is between two, no?
And that’s how our new life began. Our church did not meet in person for more than a year. I got used to livestreaming the sermon while frothing milk for my coffee. We stopped attending biweekly neighborhood “dinners” on Zoom because those virtual hangouts felt pointless and awkward.
David complained about feeling isolated; I felt liberated—free from anyone’s petty drama or birthday parties or baby showers. My plans revolved around my interests and convenience.
Slowly, gradually, the outside world returned. Our church met physically for services again. We met with friends at restaurants. But by then, I had gotten comfortable living a self-contained, self-gazing life. Navigating 58 minutes of freeways to meet a friend suddenly felt draining and unnecessary. Was it really worth all that effort when we could just text or call?
Then on Saturday morning, September 18, 2021, my husband received a call from his dad. I was still in bed, but I could hear my father-in-law’s loud, ragged sobs through the phone.
While my in-laws were on their usual daily walk, a neighbor in a Chevrolet Avalanche had sped through a busy intersection and hit my mother-in-law.
By the time David and I were in the air, flying to Bismarck, North Dakota, the doctors had pronounced her dead. My father-in-law greeted us at David’s childhood home with sunken eyes and swollen cheeks, looking frail and broken in his dark, four-bedroom house.
We stayed three weeks in Bismarck. Relatives converged from across the country. Friends and neighbors rang the doorbell and dropped off cookie platters, knoephla soup, and tater tot casseroles. Our cellphones vibrated all day with text messages from friends and coworkers: “Praying for you.” “Whatever you need.” “There are no words.”
When we returned home, my husband was not the same man. He had needs he couldn’t identify. I didn’t know how to be the wife he needed, and his friends didn’t know how to be the friends he needed.
Our church asked if we wanted a meal train. We said no. We lived a ways from most of the congregation, and besides, I hate casseroles.
I realize now that turning down the offer was a grave mistake. People wanted a reason to come knock on our door, to invite themselves over, and I had closed the gate on them. So over time, people forgot. They had their own problems. Some texted to ask how David was doing, but they didn’t know how to respond when he told them he was still grieving.
Five months after the tragedy, I found out I was pregnant—six months pregnant.
When I gave birth to our son, we named him Tov to remind ourselves that God is tov—“good” in Hebrew. God created the world and called it tov. He also said: Lo-tov heyoth ha’adam levaddo. “It is not good for a man to be alone.”
It was through Tov that I realized I was alone. When he was born, I again declined a meal-train offer from our church; I just wanted to be left alone. Postpartum and motherhood blew my world apart. I lost my freedom of body, time, and attention. I was grossed out by how I leaked everywhere, deflated yet swollen. I had, seemingly overnight, become responsible for a helpless human being. I didn’t want to see anyone or be seen.
Nine months passed until one Sunday at church when I exited the nursing room and, lifting my head from the fog of motherhood, saw only unfamiliar faces.
In those nine months, our congregation of about 100 had changed (LA being a transient city). I hadn’t noticed. But my oblivion wasn’t solely due to motherhood. It was formed by months of seeking only what felt convenient and comfortable.
There were other obstacles to community, too. Having a baby meant less flexibility. We couldn’t attend neighborhood dinners or prayer nights, which conflicted with bedtime. We invested in one family, hoping our sons would grow up to become best friends, and then the family moved to Fresno. I was part of a discipleship group, but because of conflicting schedules, we met maybe once every six weeks. “We should meet up sometime” became such a common lie that we said it as glibly as a passing greeting.
Yes, we were busy. But to be “too busy” for community is simply to prioritize things other than community. What would our life look like now had we made different choices, like accepting those meal trains?
After visiting Denton, I made several changes. First, I called some close friends and penciled in monthly dates to hang out. If we didn’t have some sort of structured schedule, I knew we’d only meet a couple of times a year.
Second, David and I made a list of our family values. At the top: Sunday is sacred. It will no longer be an hour of church, then errands, then chilling in front of the TV. Sunday will be reserved for our church family, even if it means ruling out certain extracurricular activities for Tov.
Third, we decided to find a church closer to us. We couldn’t see ourselves forming consistent community at a faraway church with rhythms of fellowship our family couldn’t partake in. When we’re out of sight, we’re out of mind.
At our new, nearby church, we found a small group that met on Sunday afternoons. The first time we visited, older children played outside while Tov stayed with us. He bounced around like a bunny on an energy drink, sprinkling crumbs everywhere. We felt terrible, but nobody seemed to mind. When Tov started fussing, a college student got on her knees and enthralled him with magic tricks.
That first meeting felt awkward. It’s always awkward breaking into a group that has already formed its own culture and dynamics. Everyone was friendly, but we didn’t immediately jibe with anyone. We were just…so different.
The next small group gathering, we met at someone else’s house. The first thing I saw was a big campaign sign in the front yard endorsing a candidate I would never support. I groaned. I knew that a person’s political position shouldn’t matter within the body of Christ, but that sign left an impression.
What did I expect? That we’d just stumble upon “our people” and start running to Costco together and pouring out our hearts around a firepit? The first community Jesus built was his 12 disciples—men of clashing political stripes, personalities, and social backgrounds whose bickering is well documented in the Gospels (Luke 9:46). What made me think my community should share my interests, humor, and politics?
I was still struggling with these thoughts when I picked up a book called When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community by Joseph H. Hellerman. I had read multiple books on friendship and community, but this was the first one I’d found that focused on the church.
“As church-going Americans, we have been socialized to believe that our individual fulfillment and our personal relationship with God are more important than any connection we might have with our fellow human beings, whether in the home or in the church,” Hellerman wrote. “We have, in a most subtle and insidious way, been conformed to this world.”
Modern Christians often put family needs above community ones, even seeing that as biblical. But Hellerman argues that’s not what Scripture and the early church teach.
“The New Testament picture of the church as a family flies in the face of our individualistic cultural orientation,” he writes. God’s vision of the church as our first family “offers a powerful antidote” to the social ills of today.
I was still reading the book’s introduction when I realized that Joseph Hellerman was the same “Pastor Joe” who preaches at the church David and I had been attending for several weeks.
I emailed Hellerman. It turns out he lives five minutes away from me. We met up at his favorite local coffee shop. He had grown up in the neighborhood and raised two daughters in his childhood two-bedroom home. As we baked outside in the California sun, locals stopped to say hi.
Hellerman, at 71, still gives off major beach vibes. He’s been in ministry for more than four decades, using his church as a sort of “laboratory,” as he calls it, to test his convictions on community. He preaches regularly against Western individualism, trying to model community in his own life. “It hasn’t been easy,” he told me.
Hellerman is proud of his church. But of roughly 400 members, he estimates that maybe 100 truly experience the church as family. “We’ve worked, worked, worked at it, and that’s the best we can do.”
The pandemic was the most divisive time in his ministry experience. He was aghast and disappointed to see church members squabble and attack each other on social media about vaccines and masks. Some left over their differences.
Orthodoxy wasn’t the problem, Hellerman said: “I’ve seen too much good theology and bad relationships go hand in hand over the years.” We know cognitively what we need to do, what we long for, he explained. But we don’t know how to put that into practice, or we are unwilling to do so. Too many forces work against us:
“When I look at my own life, my own stubbornness when it comes to community, my wife and I don’t get the community thing like we should. We are drawn to it yet scared to death by it. It’s our house. Our money. Our life.”
Somehow, it didn’t discourage me that Hellerman, who had written a whole book about this topic with such conviction and authority, struggled to live it out. Instead, I felt encouraged—100 out of his 400 church members were managing to live out community. Here was a pastor who empathized with those who fell short, because he swims against the same currents.
The week we talked, Hellerman was working on a sermon about the role of the Holy Spirit in community. He can preach all he wants, he said, but ultimately, “If this is the truth, then as it’s being shared, the Holy Spirit in the people is going to affirm it.”
I suppose that’s what’s been going on inside me: The Spirit has been affirming what I’ve known and desired all along. “David and I don’t want to move churches anymore,” I told Hellerman. “We want to plant roots here. I want my son to grow up in a church where he has surrogate aunts and uncles. I want him to not just be raised by me and David, but by the church community. I want him to love the church as family.”
It was the first time I had expressed this out loud, but it’s a prayer that’s been gradually maturing in my heart. It started with a longing for community that first focused on my and my family’s needs.
Over time, the Holy Spirit has been illuminating and correcting me, revealing my selfishness and stubbornness, deepening and expanding my prayers toward something that’s closer to God’s heart, something that hopefully reflects the all-night prayers I imagine Jesus prayed in Luke 6:12 before he chose the disciples who would build his church.
And if this is what God wants for us, our path is simple: Follow and receive. Follow, even if it means our plans get canceled, our routines get messed up, and we sacrifice time and resources. Receive, because community is a gift from God, even if the people surrounding me don’t conform to my preferences. Even if they hurt or annoy or inconvenience me.
It sounds so simple. Yet it is so, so hard. At times I think, Why, this is nothing. Other times, I feel defeated: Can we really do this?
A few days before Christmas last year, I found out we were having another baby. Our life is only going to get more chaotic, more busy. And depending on what we choose, we might become even more isolated.
But we have to do this. Round two, here we go. And this time, I’ll accept the casseroles, thank you.
Sophia Lee
Global Writer
Sophia Lee is global staff writer at Christianity Today. What did you think of this essay? Share your thoughts with a comment!
This piece was originally featured by Christianity Today
This piece was beautifully relatable, thoughtful, convicting, humbling, and inspiring. It is so hard to build community these days, even in church, but we *have* to - out of obedience and need.
Beautiful! I am not Christian. I agree with all your longings, observations, and conclusions. We all need community, a village that we can support and that supports us. Best wishes to you and your family.