Aren't You Bored

Two months in and I’m finally bored. I’m bored of my house and I’m bored of my pup and I’m bored of our dinners and I’m bored of Netflix and I’m bored of my hammock and I’m bored of my husband and I’m mostly and terribly bored of myself. It turns out that I am simply not that interesting nor interested.

It has been helpful for me to think of this time as living a sort of domestic monastic life (not my phrasing, nor my discovery). The rote and perpetual rising and falling of rhythms around the home and within my earthly home, this tent in which I live—my body. I have tried to engage in the work of the whole body formation (spirit, body, mind, heart—spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional) with the hopes I’d come out a more fully formed person.

It turns out, as I said, I, alone, am simply not that interesting.

This morning as I verbalized my confession of boredom to Nate, inserting my apologies for saying I’m bored of him even though it’s true, it occurred to me that although there is no one else on earth with whom I’d rather be stuck at home, we are simply insufficient for the formation and fruitfulness of our persons. “It is not good,” God said, “for man to be alone.” It turns out God wasn’t primarily concerned about the partnership that comes through marriage. It is not good, period, for man to be alone. We do not need a spouse so much as we need helpers, we need the other, we need other men and women,  we need humans. We cannot be fully formed without the presence of the other.

Take that wherever you may in your life today, there are ten thousand practical examples of the need for the other in our lives—around issues of race, politics, sexuality, religion, economics, and immigration as a start. But I hope at the very least, it helps you to remember as it did for me today, that I am insufficient alone. And marriage is insufficient. Our opinions are insufficient. Our politics and our perspectives and our denomination of choice—all of these are insufficient for the growth and formation of the whole body.

I don’t believe some nirvana or utopia might be happened upon as long as we live on this side of the new heavens and new earth, but I do believe God is bringing all the disparate pieces together right now. He is reconciling. He is reconciling our compartmentalized bodies to wholeness. He is unifying divided marriages. He is leveling the disparity between shepherd and congregant. He is bringing together every tribe and every tongue. He is lifting the lowly. He is restoring the broken. And I do believe is it the work of the Christian to participate in unifying and cohesive work, however we can—to participate in leveling whatever scales exist.

I don’t know what that looks like during this time of social distancing, but I do know I cannot grow comfortable with the sameness of life right now. Boredom is a gift to me now, reminding me to not become complacent, to not grow content with sameness.