Have you struggled with a feeling of loneliness at any point in your life? Maybe you are extremely introverted and have a hard time creating and maintaining relationships with people (like me). Maybe you are the opposite and are extremely extroverted, and then a global pandemic comes along and forces you into isolation. Maybe you don’t have a great relationship with your family and have been estranged for some time, or maybe you have lost them throughout time. Whatever the situation, loneliness can create such sadness in our hearts. We were created to live in relationships with people, and also with our God. We need to put effort into all of those relationships in order to create ones that will last. With lasting relationships, we can banish feelings of loneliness or isolation.
Firstly, I want to talk about building and maintaining relationships with people. If you are extroverted you might not even need to read this section, because you people are always the ones seeking out the relationships. That is why us introverted folk need extroverted people in our lives. In that way opposites do attract. At my last job I became friends with a girl who was indeed extroverted, and she helped me come out of my shell a lot and get to know more of the other employees at that company. For a while I would just tag along with her and jump in on conversations she had started with that person. After a while, I gained my own confidence and friendships and was able to comfortably approach people on my own, and was able to build those relationships without needing her as my conduit. Sometimes we need that little push or assistance along the way to remind us (introverts - I am talking to you) how important building new relationships is. Not everyone will be your best friend and that’s okay, but feeling a sense of camaraderie with other individuals can really destroy those feelings of loneliness. It reminds you that there are plenty of people out there that care about you and appreciate having you in their lives. There are definitely people that don’t sometimes, but those are the people that we don’t pursue relationships with.
However, things changed for me personally once I was let go from that job and changed to a new job where I am working from home full time. Don’t get me wrong, I love working from home. I worked from home when I worked at this company previously during everything going on with the pandemic. However, what I realized is that when I worked from home before, I was still living at home with my parents and brother, and someone was always home with me. There was never any time to be lonely between doing my work and always having someone to talk to. Now that I am married and it is just my husband and I, I work from home alone everyday while he goes to work. At first that was a tough adjustment because I was feeling that loneliness, and it has also hit me again recently. For the past month I have of course worked from home alone, COVID ripped through my immediate family so we had to stay away from them for a month, and football season is right around the corner so my husband has been really enjoying getting back into all those things he loves. And because I struggle so much to build and maintain relationships, I was spending a lot of time alone because I didn’t know who else to hang out with! Don’t get me wrong - I know my husband loves me and he does spend plenty of time with me, but he has other friends and other hobbies too that he should be able to do and enjoy. He can’t be my only companion and I can’t expect me to be his. That isn’t healthy. I say all this because I know in my head that I also need to find other hobbies and people I can spend time with, but I struggle so bad to put myself out there and reach out to people. It is one of the most difficult things for me to do, and if you feel that way too then I completely understand you. But let’s challenge each other to just try to build relationships. Let’s squash loneliness for good.
Secondly, we never have to feel alone because our God is always with us. That is why he gave us his Holy Spirit - so we would never be alone and would have access to his wisdom and peace. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate (the Holy Spirit), who will never leave you” (John 14:16). Even if the relationships in your life don’t work out, your relationship with God will always be there to lean into. God made a way to have a relationship with you through the sacrifice of his Son, so that shows you how much he wants to be in your life. How much he wants to spend time with you and build a deep, meaningful, long term relationship with you. Even if you push him away, he is still there, and ready to welcome you back with open arms. We can always find comfort in the arms of our Savior. We will never be lonely in his presence because he wants to be there with you, and he will always show up. Your relationship with him will satisfy every need of fulfillment.
Now building a relationship with the Lord has it’s challenges too, just like building relationships with people. Yeah you don’t have to text him and ask when he is free, and then panic when he doesn’t respond back (Only true introverts understand this feeling). You can talk to him freely at any time. However, just like relationships with people, you have to put the time and effort in for it to grow and have a solid foundation. Just like how if you don’t spend time with someone you don’t get to know them, it is the same with our Lord. I think the biggest takeaway from all this is that relationship building takes work; it takes effort. We can’t be afraid of that work or else we will find ourselves drifting back into loneliness.
Are you willing to put in the time and effort to build all of these relationships? Or are you cool with them falling by the wayside? I understand there is a difference between not caring about building relationships and struggling to build them (since I myself fall into the latter category as you know well by now). Let’s care and really put our best effort into building all the relationships in our lives. Who knows, you may unwittingly save someone for their loneliness.
“…And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20b)
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