“Dear Jim, Do you ever feel Lonely?”
Jim January 15th, 2012
Below is an email I received…
Hey Jim,
Do you ever feel lonely? I’ve spent the last half year figuring out how to be single and look to God for affirmation and love; and it’s been an uphill, but worthwhile battle. I don’t even think it has to do with being single… Man, I just feel so lonely. It feels weird writing ya this, but I don’t know, it’s not something I can just bring up with everybody….
I realize that God is dwelling within me, but man, it’s like I can’t tap into it. Like, it’s on my fingertips and I just can’t grab it. The past few weeks have been amazing being home, but I’ve been feeling bits of past depression creeping in at times. It’s all centered around these feelings of loneliness; why is it that I feel lonely? I have two parents who love and support me to death, I just got back home from seeing my brother at college, and yet I feel so much anxiety and desparity I think my heart’s gonna jump out of my chest. I feel like I’m in early high school again, complaining about crap I used to complain about before I became a Christian. I think parts of me doesn’t feel like I should be able to hurt and feel despair, because I’m a Christian. I mean, I know God’s got everything and I tell myself that I totally trust him, and I know all the bullshit answers, but I don’t feel like it’s ok to feel the way I do. So yeah, here’s Ty admitting he’s lonely, feels hurt, and doesn’t have it all together; although he puts on a very convincing show of it all the time. I don’t know, maybe I just needed to get this out. Once again, thanks for being a safe place to lay my feelings out. I appreciate it…
Do you experience loneliness?
Maybe you are literally alone, as in you live by yourself. Maybe you feel the world has left you behind or that you don’t fit anywhere or that the world could get along just fine with or without you, as if you are expendable and it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps it is a loneliness of feeling forgotten or overlooked or rejected or judged or misunderstood. Maybe you wish someone…anyone…would show interest in you, pursue you, and want you.
Maybe you have lots of people in your life but you still feel alone. Married and alone. Successful and alone. Tons of friends and alone. Fit and attractive and alone. Busy and alone. Spiritual and alone. All the right God answers and alone. Maybe there are all kinds of people arranged in your life but you still feel loneliness. Maybe it’s a deep disconnect you feel from everyone and everything.
Do you experience loneliness? What is it like for you? Does despair and hopelessness accompany your loneliness? What helps you or pulls you out of it? How do you deal with your loneliness? Does your faith/God help or not really? Does your faith/God make it worse? How has your religious beliefs effected your feelings of loneliness? Why are so many people lonely? What are we missing? What’s the way out of our loneliness? Why do we have such great theology and still feel deep loneliness? Is there a way out of this or is loneliness incurably part of the human condition?
Can we speak honesty about how we experience loneliness? Would you be willing to share about your loneliness? Can you describe how it feels. What have you learned? What is the world of loneliness for you? How do you work through it?
(photo by Darla)
- Pondering
- Comments(4)
Yes I do. I think it’s impossible to be human and not be lonely from time to time. Isn’t that why Facebook is so darn popular? You’re not a failure for being lonely. You’re not a loser if you’re lonely.
I have bouts with it. When it’s sought of like a wave. Sometimes it’s easy to handle, other times it’s like whitewater flowing over my head and knocking me over. I have come to believe that God is giving me the time to spend with him; to think about him and communicate with him. Although there are many times when I wish I could spend more time with my family and friends.
I found that I feel lonely when something goes down. Like when a project comes to an end and I see that I don’t have anything new yet… Or when I want to see my wife more but she’s busy all the time. Bad thoughts fill my head. Loneliness opens the doors of my heart.
In these situations I remind myself that well-known verse: ‘Why my soul are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God’.
it helps a little. Not 100% but at least I move my narrow mind from a particular problem to a bigger picture of who I am and where I am in this world.
And in these moments I feel that I still love this life yet I’m sooo ready to move on to the next chapter of it. And it’s OK, we’ll be patient and one day there will be no more loneliness! No more sorrow. How cool is that?! Looking forward to it!
Just wanted you to know I did read this, Jim. Everyone feels lonely at some time or another. Jesus did. The prophets did.
It’s not a sin, and not even necessarily an indication that something is wrong with you. Sometimes, it can be precisely because you’re right and everyone else around you is wrong.
The only way out of protracted loneliness is to seek the presence of God in our lives through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Wisdom, solace, peace, confidence: these things come from that practice. Everything else feels like a vapor in comparison.
That’s my two cents.
Aloneness was the first human crisis in the Bible. God created Adam and everything else and He brought them all to Adam, but nothing was found that was a suitable companion for Adam. This was the first time God said that something was not good. So He created Eve. Adam was no longer alone and that was good.
I do get really lonely sometimes. I am in constant relationship with God, but there is a part of me that longs to share life and spirit to spirit communion with other people that I can see and hug and laugh and cry with; to be relational intimate (deeply knowing one another) with other people in the body. I don’t get depressed anymore but I do have a feeling of great longing.
I used to feel really guilty about being lonely because it meant I had a “need” for relationship and that “I wasn’t looking to God to fulfill all my needs.” Bible belt baptist theology can really heap on the guilt sometimes. Screw religion: Needs are legit and we all have them and God said relationship is good.
I often ponder the statement, “God cannot create that which He is not already.” So I think to have a need for relationship is just another reflection of God. I think the greatest hindrance to the relationship that so many people are starving for is based on some point of great brokenness in their lives and the crippling fear that is the constant companion of brokenness and hurt. I know that is true for myself. The remedy for great hurt is great love, or you and me, God in us loving them.
I was sitting at a coffee shop the other day studying and I overheard a group of students at the next table talking about what they thought about there being a god or a big bag at the beginning of creation. One was “raised as a mormon by force. My parents didn’t care what I thought and just made me go along with the religion.” Another student’s father walked out on her before she was born and her mother was a workaholic and was never at home or talked about any kind of religion. As I watched, the behaviors of these student’s showed hints of deep longing and a starvation for love and acceptance. But having been so wounded by the people that were suppose to show them God and protect them as children, for now they only know great hurt and aloneness.
I don’t think I know the remedy for removing aloneness for myself or all of mankind. I am not sure if it something that will come and go in life or if God has something else in store for removing aloneness. This is something that I have had to give up to God and know that I cannot create meaningful relationship but that I am ready for them whenever there is a divine encounter. I know God delights in relationship and desires if for me and this gives me hope in the times of loneliness.