The Art of Loneliness

Sometimes I feel lonely.

  

Like really lonely.

An aching loneliness that comes from deep within me. That arises when I'm home alone or when I'm scrolling through Instagram on a Friday night seeing all my friends doing things while I have no plans or searching my contacts to find someone, anyone who would want to hang out with me. It's different though, in that this is the kind of loneliness you get not just while alone but even while sitting in a room surrounded by individuals.

I can be in a crowded room of my friends and suddenly look up at all their faces and feel it. I can be sitting in the library alone at a table and feel it. This gnawing, heavy loneliness. It comes with swirling feelings running through my head that start to spiral into negative thoughts.

"No one cares about me"

"No one really knows me"

"No one enjoys being around me"

"No one thinks I'm fun"

"No one wants to hear what I have to say"

"I will always be second choice"

"I will always be alone."

  This loneliness is something that affects my everyday life. My friendships especially, because I'm the type of person who tends to place high, unrealistic expectations on my friendships. I do this and try to ignore the fact that we are each as broken as the next and so when those around me disappoint me or hurt me or I'm their second choice it feels like a harsh betrayal because I placed such a high value and expectation on them not reminding myself of their brokenness and imperfectness.

So I become lonely.

I walk around campus, a smile on my face. I sit in a room and laugh with a blank face at the jokes, or nod my head or wave hello or stay up late for another movie. But underneath that facade is an that aching loneliness that follows me around like a shadow.

It's a loneliness that is selfish. It's selfish because it comes from a place of thinking I deserve something or that God owes me something. I go to God demanding that I deserve the amazing friends you see in movies who are always hitting you up to hang out and are constantly choosing you first . That God owes me the friendships, the relationship, the community that I believe I deserve because of the loneliness and betrayal and hurts I've had from 

relationships in the past. 

But that isn't the point of my loneliness. What I didn't realize until recently is that my loneliness is a blessing in disguise, just as Pauls "thorn in [his] flesh". It's not something thats fun to feel or fun to experience, but it is something that God so intricately takes as something that in its original design was meant to pull me farther from Him and farther from community into isolation but instead pulls me closer to Him and to those around me.

 I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. 
For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

2 Corinthians 12:5-10

Because of loneliness I seek and crave for true friendship, to have someone or anyone that would just know me. And so when I look around and only see other broken humans who can't ever fully satisfy that desire within me it leads me to finally look up to see that the friend I so earnestly wanted who was right in front of my face, walking alongside me all along. 

And because I found the friend of all friends in Christ I can be okay with not always feeling like I fit in. With not always feeling like I have a "friend group" or with not having plans and sitting at home watching The Office on a Friday night. And because I found Him I can better see the brokenness of the people around me. I can seek community and friendships on this Earth in a much more realistic and healthy way. Realizing that the people around me will always disappoint, no matter how great of a friend they are and I will always disappoint them no matter how great of a friend I am because we are imperfect human beings. But only one friend will never disappoint, never abandon, and always love and that is Jesus. So I can now see this loneliness as God's gentle nudging for me to come closer, to lean in more to His embrace as He whispers his truths into my ear so I can everyday wake up and go out into this world to try to "lay down [my] life" to be the friend to others that He is to me.

 Greater Love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13