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Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
1 Thessalonians 5:18 (ESV)

She spent Thanksgiving alone.

It’s a reality. While many of us have children and friends and family with whom to share Thanksgiving, many spent the day completely alone in their homes.

You may be one of them.

And even if you are not, I ask that you listen in to a conversation I had with a widow about this reality.

She’s in her late sixties and recently lost her husband. Because of some family misunderstandings, her few grown kids don’t reach out to her. Her friends and neighbors assumed she had somewhere to go on Thanksgiving, and she didn’t hint that she’d be alone because she didn’t want a sympathy invitation.

So she sat alone on Thursday, watching TV or busying herself with other things to do.

“Here’s what some of you who have families need to understand about many widows out there,” this widowed friend said. “There are many widows like me–very alone, with no children at home.

“And we sit on the holiday–completely, utterly alone. No one to talk to. It’s isolating, and it hurts–deeply. It’s those widows who need to hear from you too. They need to know they are not alone, and there is a way to reconnect to the world around them.”

The tears in her voice reflected a deep experience of suffering.

Paul tells the Thessalonians to be thankful in all circumstances because they are the will of God. But how can it be the “will of God” for a widow to spend such a holiday completely alone?

I thought about my own experience with solitude on a holiday.

It can happen to all of us.

At thirty I was stuck in a post-divorce situation where I didn’t want to connect with “our” friends from the marriage that just ended. My closer friends were traveling to see families. It was nothing personal, but I was simply in a place where I was alone. It upset me so much that I made a decision to get out no matter what. I spent the day at a soup kitchen, serving a Thanksgiving meal to the homeless.

Still, when the shelter finished the dinner, and it was time to go home, I returned to an empty house.

I looked at the four walls, clicked on a football game and found some potato chips to nurture the wound in my heart. At the time I didn’t know Christ and His healing strength. In my solitude I mocked myself. How could I have had such a big group of friends and family, and yet I still sat alone. In the week to follow I avoided people. I didn’t want the questions–“How was Thanksgiving?” I didn’t want to explain I had nowhere to go!

I began to learn who the real Christ is.

I grew in my understanding of Him. How He chose to be completely alone up there on the cross. How He chose to walk alone in the wilderness for forty days before starting His ministry. How He knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane while his apostles abandoned Him for the comfort of sleep, and how He cried out to the Father in the pain of loneliness.

Solitude brought me closer to Christ.

The Thanksgiving I spent alone connected me with the suffering of Christ and strengthened me to minister to others. What a gift! One that keeps giving because every year those who find themselves in that situation need to hear from others who’ve been there. We know that all of us here on Earth experience that “aloneness” at some point in our lives.

Being alone on a holiday does not make us unworthy.

And having friends and family around us doesn’t make us worthy.

HE MAKES US WORTHY!

And we are just as worthy of feeling Christ’s joy, even when we are alone on a holiday.

Father God, would You please help my dear sister reading this know You do not will for her to be alone forever. Help her know she is worthy because of You, and she can be an even bigger blessing to others because she knows the pain that another feels. Teach her to use that knowledge and feel the power of Your love within her veins. Amen.