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)

Over the last few months I’ve given away quite a few of Nate’s clothes, many of them to our Illinois church’s clothing distribution to the homeless. There’s one piece, however, I’ve decided to keep… and to wear. It’s his navy blue, terrycloth bath robe.

Nate wore this robe daily. Throughout 2009 when he was plagued by severe back pain, he couldn’t wait to get out of his business suit each evening and into the comfort of this bath robe. Usually the transition was made immediately after our 7:00 PM dinner by way of a hot soak in the tub with the day’s newspapers.

Although there were nights during his stressful career when he’d fall into bed very late wearing his white long-sleeved dress shirt still buttoned at the wrists, in recent years he did away with all that. And during his last year, he worked deliberately to reduce his pain and find a measure of comfort each evening.

Once in a while I’d get frustrated watching him abdicate the hustle and bustle of family life in favor of undressing and moving toward a prone position. I even grew to dislike the navy robe, which for both of us represented the end of his day. I’d ask, “Are you getting ready for night time already? It’s only 8:00.”

Now, of course, I feel badly about the implication of my question, but I hadn’t known the extent of his pain.

One of the reasons he loved his terrycloth robe was not having to dry off after a bath or shower. “It’s like a giant towel doing the job for me,” he’d say.

These days, as I wrap myself in his “giant towel,” I think comforting thoughts about Nate. I ponder the absence of complaining about his back and know he’d smile to see how I’ve come to appreciate his robe. I also imagine how he’d laugh if he could see me in it, the shoulders droopy and the belt nearly going around twice. But he’d be glad to know I’ve finally discovered there’s comfort in that terrycloth.

Many of my widow pals say they find a warm refuge in wearing a husband’s jacket, shirt or socks. It sounds silly, especially if we never shared our men’s clothing while they were still with us. But it’s one of the few remaining links we have to our partners, and because of that, wearing their clothes takes on special meaning.

Scripture tells us God is a good comforter. He provides his Holy Spirit as a soothing balm from our insides out, supplying comfort deep-down in those places nobody sees. Jesus said that when we mourn, he’ll see to it that relief comes to us. (Matthew 5:4) One of the many ways he’s comforted me is by coaxing me into Nate’s robe.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles…” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4a)