Extracted from
Today's Christian Woman, September/October 1998
by Camerin Courtney
For the first eight months after I graduated from college, I lived alone. What could have been the most lonely time of my life turned out to be one of the most rewarding. I would pray out loud while washing dishes, sing along with the radio without apology, or settle into a chair with a good book and read uninterrupted for hours. There was a richness to this time in my life I wouldn't trade for anything—even the days when the relative silence did actually turn into loneliness. And even on those days, because I had no one to turn to, I'd cry out to God and sense his presence more acutely than if I'd had the distractions of a husband and kids.
I've learned that being alone out in public has its benefits, too. Last fall I took a business trip to New York alone. My evenings were free and Broadway was a few blocks away, so I gathered my courage one night and went to see a show on my own. During the intermission, I struck up a conversation with the mom sitting next to me and discovered she and her family were from Denmark visiting the States for the first time. We chatted for a few minutes, exchanging cultural info we each took in with rapt interest.
The next night I had dinner at a nearby quaint Italian restaurant with a woman from Arizona I met at one of the seminars earlier that day. After dinner we wandered over to Rockefeller Center and people-watched as we chatted about our jobs and home states. Because I didn't have someone else's schedule to take into consideration, I was free to take these spur-of-the-moment excursions—and interact with interesting people along the way.
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