A popular song in the late sixties was entitled “One”:

• “One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
• One is the loneliest number, worse than two…”

Is that true?

During these last months my days have been about rearranging life to be about one rather than many, the reversal of a 40 year pattern. Big families are all about multiple bedrooms, multiple cars and multiple chairs at the dinner table. I used to do laundry daily but now can get away with only a few loads a week, and many days without any laundry at all. I used to do daily walk-throughs in the house, picking up and putting away on a continual, never-finished basis, but now everything stays where I put it.

Young moms who read this will think, “She’s got it made!”

I know someday I’ll see it that way, too. I’m not complaining about a lighter work load. That would be goofy. I’m just finding it difficult to adjust to rapid, radical change. There were supposed to be two of us in this empty nest, not just one.

This morning as I chose a small sauce pan in which to boil my cholesterol-fighting oatmeal, I had to smile. The pan would have fit right in with a little girl’s play kitchen set. But it was the right size for just me.

Two things came to mind, both encouraging. (1) It was God who put me into this new life of “one” and (2) I suspect he is readying me for whatever is next. It’s like Nate’s proverbial ten foot wall over which he couldn’t see. (Oct.3, 2009, “I can’t see the future.”) In his case, not knowing what was coming was a good thing, because his future held great physical pain, followed by an “early” death.

Taking a lesson from those circumstances and applying it to my life of “one”, I don’t need to know what’s ahead. And even more importantly, it’s actually best if I don’t know what’s coming. Once I can believe that wholeheartedly, I can relax in my empty nest alone and make friends with a tiny sauce pan.

Instead of the song “One”, I’m choosing to dwell on another tune popular at the same time: “Known only to Him.” Nate loved Elvis Presley’s recordings of Gospel songs, and this one was on the disc he often played in his car on the way to the Amtrak station.

• “Known only to Him are the great hidden secrets.
• I’ll fear not the darkness when my flame shall dim.
• I know not what the future holds,
• But I know who holds the future.
• It’s a secret known only to Him.”

This old chorus, which we used to sing in high school youth group, sounds syrupy now, but its principle is profound: entrust the future to the one who knows its secrets. This is especially beneficial when that one is motivated toward you and me by unbounded love.

Thinking like this makes me eager for whatever is ahead, whether I’m cooking in a tiny sauce pan or stirring in a giant pot. Either way, I know I won’t be “a lonely number.”

“When times are good, be happy, but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future.” (Ecclesiastes 7:14)