ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?

Updated: Jan 4, 2023

She was 13 years older than me. She taught me how to dance – the stroll, the jitterbug, the waltz. She sang to me all the popular songs of that day, and I learned the words carefully so I could sing with her. She loved Elvis. Her all-time favorite song was “Are you Lonesome Tonight,” and she sang it with such feeling and reverence, her face full of expression. She would dance around holding me and singing the song. I liked her version better than his and listening to her beautiful voice.

She was a cheerleader. I learned all her high-school cheers and practiced them when she did. She and I used to sleep together late into the mornings sometimes, all cuddled up and warm. It was a favorite place for me.

Myrna Irene was a beautiful woman, although I don’t think she ever knew that. I know the men she chose mirrored her own feelings about her self-worth. She wanted love. Her own father abandoned her very early, and she didn’t know much about him. Her stepfather was good to her, but she always felt in second place.

She married her first husband in rebellion because her mother wouldn’t let her marry a truck driver she was in love with while she was in high school. Her solution was to meet a man she barely knew in secret, get pregnant, run away, and marry that man. It didn’t last. Her second husband was madly in love - with whatever he wanted. Myrna always took second place. He lied to her, cheated on her, manipulated her, and always kept her in her place. In the end, however, right before she died, he became the husband he should have always been, caring for her in her illness. No one, not even Myrna, knew he was dying of lung cancer himself, and he passed before she did.

I can see her battling against breast cancer’s horrible weapons, exhausted and confused about what was happening to her life. She was 58 years old when that terrible thing took her life. She only lived a year from the time she was diagnosed. She had waited too long to care for herself. I have a letter she sent me during her last days, where she writes many things about going through the treatments and other thoughts, none of which I will share. They are hers and mine together.

When Myrna was diagnosed I had just finished my esthetician training. I had been playing around with a brochure for my services and had given her a copy. It was nothing serious, but come to find out, she had made copies of it, carried them in her purse, and while she was in the hospital getting treatments, she would hand them out to people. I saw her do it one day, and I was completely blown away by that gesture of love. She told the nurse, “This is my sister, and she gives the best facial you will ever have. You should call her.”

I was able to give Myrna only one facial, and it was not under the greatest circumstances. It was in her tiny, cramped bedroom, in her old double-wide mobile home, with her head at the foot of her bed so that I could sit at the end and give her a facial. She had never had one, and so much wanted to experience it. She said she loved it. My wish is that she did.

As I sat there giving her that facial, I looked around her bedroom. She had a closet hung with Walmart clothes and dolls she had crocheted sitting around. At the bottom of her closet were THE shoes! At one time she had bought herself a pair of bright pink high heels, and oh my they were gorgeous! They were a deep and rich color of pink, with cream colored swirly accents, and I thought they were just perfect for her. I was fascinated by them when I was a teenager, and she would let me wear them around her house. She rarely had an occasion to wear them herself.

Every where you looked on her 1980's paneled walls were pictures of her children, and her family, including pictures of me.

For quite a while after she died, I would wake up crying in the mornings with that thought on my mind. My sister had pictures of those she loved and treasured hanging on her walls, and my picture was there. Other than my mother, there was no one else I knew who proudly hung my picture on their walls to display their love for me. To this day, you can visit any of my family, and you will not see a picture of me on their walls. But my sister had one. I was important to her, and my dreams were important to her. She hung my picture on her wall, and hung onto my dreams with me, and I miss her love and support so very much.

Recently again I woke with thoughts of my sister’s love for me, and those pictures of me she treasured. I recalled the loneliness and desperation I felt before I chose to take another look at the man who loved me - Jesus. In Song of Soloman 8:5, it describes a woman coming out of a great wilderness. I liken that wilderness to loneliness, pain, rejection, and a long time of searching for love. We stay in it so long we forget how to be loved, and how to love. It says, “Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?” Such a beautiful and hopeful passage.

She survived and she had a beloved! We as women have the assurance that Jesus’ love is the greatest love we will ever have, or ever need, and the wilderness is only temporary if we choose to leave it. His arm leads us out.

That Arm is what gets me up every morning and keeps me walking toward Him. I stumble, I moonwalk backwards sometimes, I fall down and skin my knees. But He lifts me up and gives me a little push in the right direction when He sees me faltering. I must keep my eyes and my heart open for that little push. I am over the moon in love with the fact He has a picture of me on his hands, written by my name. “See I have engraved you on the palm of my hands, your walls are ever before me.” Isaiah 49:16

Friend - do you have that kind of a beloved? Do you wake up every morning knowing that Jesus loves you, and nothing will change that? I pray you do! Learn of God's true character, Jesus shows it to you in the story of His life on this earth. He came to seek, and save, the lost, the fallen, the lonely and unloved. You will find your true self-worth, His value of you, in the palm of His hands.

The words to this song have a lot of meaning for me on many levels, including the one where you substitute Jesus as the singer, rather than Elvis.