Today’s post is written by my wonderful friend and former seminary classmate, Lauren Januzik. Lauren is an incredible writer, preacher, and pastor. She currently works at Tyndale House Publishing where she works closely with the Nueva Traducción Viviente, the sister translation to the NLT. I’m delighted to share this piece of hers on friendship and the book of Ruth.
TW: This post speaks candidly about panic attacks.
. . .
“Lauren, you can do this.”
It was March 2020. My mom’s voice echoed on the other end of the line, her voice muffled as I pressed the phone tighter to my ears. Endless tears streamed down my face. “No, mom.” I choked out. I looked down at my shaking hands. “I don’t think I can.”
I was living alone in my two-bedroom apartment at the time, halfway through the spring semester of my second year of seminary. Already a week and a half into the lockdown, I had spent those first grueling days of the biggest global crisis I had ever known completely alone. I tried desperately to fill my time, as I ordered groceries, watched the news, failed to work on papers I had due in a few weeks, and called as many people as I could think of—sometimes the same people multiple times each day—trying desperately to keep them on the phone for as long as they would tolerate me.
I’ll never forget the day the panic attacks set in. I woke up one morning to the internal commotion of my own pounding heart—a feeling that haunts me to this day. I began to endlessly scroll through social media for any news, any connection, and any way to numb the chaos inside my brain that began to make me lose grip on reality.
My chest aches when I think about those days. And I sometimes still experience panic attacks when I’m by myself for too long because of them. It’s easy to gaslight myself into wondering what specifically made them so impossible—after all, I was safe, I was fed, and I had people to talk to. When I am tempted to do this, however, a still voice reminds me that those days were impossible because the essence of my very being was never designed to live them.
It is not good for [mankind] to be alone.
. . .
One of the most profound parts of Scripture is that we are not only first told this truth in the opening pages of Genesis, but we are also reminded of it over and over as God’s redemptive story unfolds. One such powerful story occurs in the book of Ruth. Nestled between Judges and 1 Samuel, Ruth is a story of two women whose love for one another provides the very backdrop of God’s faithfulness that would culminate in the continuation of Christ’s genealogical line by the end of chapter 4. Rather than finding a Hallmark-esque story between Ruth and Boaz (despite what most bible studies will tell us), we find a completely different “love story” altogether—the one between God and these two women—and therefore, His people.
The book opens with a woman named Naomi who loses her husband Elimelech in the foreign land of Moab, a country that provided food when they were at risk of starving in Bethlehem. In the wake of Elimelech’s death, the author of Ruth tells us that Naomi “was left” with her two sons (Ruth 1:3), painting them as wonderful gifts of companionship in the wake of her husband’s death. However, just two verses later, we are told that tragedy strikes again a decade later. We read that she “was left” once more, and yet this time, her grief is compounded. What in many ways was the source of provision for Naomi in the wake of her husband’s death—the company of her two sons—has now become the very subject of another catastrophic loss. She is now not only a widow, but also a mother who has lost both of her children. The only ones still standing beside her, two non-Israelite women, are wrecked with grief as well—having just lost their husbands and their formal ties to Naomi, and thus, Elimelech’s family inheritance.
Blinded by sorrow and the brimming news of Bethlehem’s returning fruitful harvest, Naomi begins the arduous journey back to Bethlehem with her two daughters-in-law in tow. I can imagine her holding on to her last shred of dignity as she pulls herself up by her fraying bootstraps, packs food for the journey, puts one foot in front of the other, and wills her foggy mind to forget what she left behind. However strong she might be at this moment, I can fathom that she is weak and tired from tears and profound worry as she wonders what kind of a life could possibly be ahead.
I can picture Ruth and Orpah, the daughters-in-law in question, taking their mother-in-law’s lead as they too summon their own strength to set out toward a new life. As the story goes, mid-journey, Naomi comes to her senses and urges both women to stay behind, knowing full well as a widow herself that she could not promise security, provision, or a good life for either of them. “Go back to your mothers’ homes,” she exclaims. “May the Lord bless you with the security of another marriage.”
Inevitably, Orpah heeds this advice and turns back. But as for Ruth? She stays. Though it cost her everything—her homeland, her customs, her family, and the security of a sustainable life—she refuses to leave Naomi’s side and travels with her all the way to Bethlehem to start over, not knowing what would meet them there.
I can’t imagine Naomi wanting to be alone in this scene, or even that she believes that she can survive the journey without someone else with her. What I can imagine, however, is that in the storm of complex emotions, her common sense is the only thing that makes sense. And yet, even as Naomi bristles at the hope that someone would risk staying with her because that hope is just too painful, Ruth passionately pledges an oath to stay with her until death: “Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.”
Through this oath, the Lord shows his love and faithfulness to Naomi, a woman calloused by bitterness and heartache, by providing her with Ruth. Ruth’s eventual marriage to Boaz means powerful redemption for Naomi’s story as she inevitably keeps her family standing in Israel (a big deal for women in those days) and is given a place of high honor on the pages of our Bibles. Because Ruth stays with her, even though Naomi urges her not to, by the end of the book, Naomi finds herself the grandmother of a baby who would become “better than seven sons,” an ancestor of the future Savior of the world.
. . .
Just as with Naomi, grief and loneliness are cruel friends to us. They blind those of us who have lost loved ones, those who have seen friendships end, those who have left our worlds or our dreams behind, or those who look in the mirror and hate what we see. In the midst of the complexity that is life this side of heaven, at times it is far too painful to imagine that someone—anyone—would choose us when we are our very worst selves. And yet, because God loves us as his created people, those people will continue to come. May we embrace them, even if only with a sliver of hope, as they come our way.
“I will try again.
I know I will,
because someone else’s absurd faith in me
is fortifying.
Blessed are our flying buttresses.
For they hold us up
when everything seems ready to come apart,
allowing us to face today—
not because we’re doing it alone—
but precisely because we aren’t.”
Excerpt from “For friends who hold us up” in The Lives we Actually Have
by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie
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