Practical Help
Practical Help
We all have times when the chill of loneliness hits. Like a knife thrust into the stomach, feelings of emptiness, insecurity, rejection and isolation can send us reeling in pain and even incapacitate us.
“I’m lonely as I write these words,” wrote my ministry partner, Janice Kaat. But she continued, “Tears are okay to cleanse the spirit, but there is more to life then tears. There is a whole new world out there. A beautiful world, even if I have to travel it alone.”
Her several practical suggestions for overcoming loneliness have inspired me to write this webpage.
Know that Loneliness is a State of Mind, Not a Life Sentence
Loneliness has surprisingly little to do with being alone. You could be hundreds of miles from the nearest human and bask in the blissful peace of solitude, or you could be a newly wed with your darling in your arms and find yourself plagued by the gnawing emptiness of loneliness.
Loneliness is depression resulting from an inability to cope with the fact of life that this side of heaven every one of us has times when our yearnings to be heard and understood and appreciated by another human are not met. No matter how loved and popular we are, we can have pain and heartache that no one else feels; fears and opinions that those close to us don’t share or understand; and times when we are separated from someone we yearn to be with.
I don’t have to react badly to this inescapable fact, even though my aloneness seems more severe than most people’s.
Learn How to Like Yourself
If you don’t like yourself, you are doomed never to like being alone. And you will drag your gloom into any future relationship.
It is usual for people who dislike themselves to wrongly imagine that other people will also dislike them. Expecting to be disliked and rejected, they tend to withdraw from people, thus perpetuating their loneliness. Some are barely aware that they deliberately sabotage relationships, driven by the presumption that it is less painful to push someone away rather than wait for what they wrongly suppose to be inevitable rejection. As a consequence, everyone involved ends up needlessly hurt.
If we don’t like ourselves, it means we are not seeing ourselves through God’s eyes. To say God thinks the world of us is an understatement. Jesus gave everything for us. No human has ever loved anyone with the intensity that God loves you. Yes, he sees room for improvement, but being God, he is powerful enough and loving enough to be working right now in your life, perfecting you. When you welcome the God of the impossible into your life, permitting him to have his beautiful way with you, you are a divine masterpiece under construction. If you have been born again, a spiritual transformation has exploded within you such that a lifetime isn’t nearly enough to catch up with all that has happened to you. For example, guilt about the past is simply an illusion you can ignore. Even if you currently find yourself enslaved by habits you despise, as God’s child you are destined to discover how to find victory through Christ.
As explained in To God You are Special, (the link is listed below) having God in your life not only means you are never without a companion who truly loves and understands you and believes in you, it means you have the power to enrich other people’s lives. Let God rule your conversations and direct your life and you need never shrink from people, thinking you have nothing to offer them. With the Almighty in your life, there can be no such thing as inadequacy. Reach out to people and you will be a continual source of blessing.
Avoid Dependency on Another Human for Your Own Happiness
To put responsibility for your happiness in someone else’s hand is a scary thought, unless that person happens to be always available, never fails, never changing yet never boring, all-wise, all-powerful, immortal, and is always unselfishly devoted to maximizing your long-term happiness. To expect such divine qualities from a human is to set yourself up for painful disappointment and it isn’t fair to the other person. Your happiness is your own responsibility.
Much of the pain of loneliness is nothing more than pining for things that only God can ever give. Hoping to find these qualities in a human, rather than in God, is like hoping to find refreshment in a mirage.
Instead of craving for substitutes, go for the Real Thing.
Exercise
A good, brisk walk outdoors can be surprisingly effective in picking up your spirits and making your world a whole lot brighter.
Discover Smile Power
No matter how unhappy you are, the very act of smiling triggers the brain to release chemicals that make you feel better. A smile also brightens your face, improving your looks better than almost any makeover. Moreover, smiling is a magnet that attracts people to you. People instinctively sidestep a person whose unsmiling face suggests he or she might be grumpy or angry or preoccupied. It makes them wary, heightening their own fear of rejection. Alternatively, when someone with a smile catches their eye, their defenses drop and they feel drawn to the person. They find themselves thinking, “Here is someone who will accept me; someone I can feel comfortable with.”
Maximize the Advantages of Solitude
If your social calendar has been heavily pruned, remember that pruning increases a tree’s fruitfulness. Add to this God’s rock-solid commitment to weave everything together for the good of those who love him, and it is obvious that immense benefits can flow from being alone.
It is tough, lonely training sessions that turn an average athlete into a champion. If you’re alone, you’re in great company in that most of humanity’s great achievers have spent much time alone. In order to excel, they have sacrificed relationships, either completely or by slashing the time available to enjoy relationships. Even famous, popular people usually get that way by spending much of their time separated from loved ones.
Your time of aloneness might not be your conscious choice, but if you hand it to God it can achieve much.
Avoid the “Poor me” Syndrome
It is alright to feel lonely. I feel it more often than not. We were divinely created with a need for human companionship that can be satisfied by nothing else. Not even a thrilling, fulfilling relationship with God is a complete substitute, any more than having a wonderful friend removes our longing for marriage. Just as God could miraculously eliminate our need for oxygen, he could eliminate our need for human companionship, but he rarely does, because we can bring eternal glory to ourselves by the way we respond to this longing.
I am 51 and have never had sex. The craving has been torturous but I am comforted by the fact that without it I would be even less normal than I am. My sexuality, as unfulfilled and as annoying as it is, has empowered me to understand and help significant numbers of people with all sorts of sexual problems. My pain has made me a better person. Without it I would be spiritually weaker and less compassionate.
So feel the pain, but move on. Be thankful. Rejoice in what you have.
Escape as from a dungeon the self-inflicted misery of self-pity. Godliness accompanied by contentment is great gain, the Bible wisely declares. Nothing inflames discontent and turns being alone into raging loneliness like the fool’s comfort of daydreaming and filling our minds with “If only . . .” Porn, and even romantic fiction, whether in print or on the screen or put to music, intensifies the craving and becomes a form of self-torture.
To travel the highway to adventure and fulfillment, we must leave the dead end of feeling sorry for ourselves and move on to feeling empathy for other people.
Drive a car with your eyes fixed on yourself and it is inevitable that you will crash, thus adding to your miseries. Anyone who goes through life focusing on himself is doomed to a dreary life. We were made to function properly only when we focus not on ourselves but on God and on other people. Only then can we hope to see clearly and find the fulfillment we were born for.
Keep looking at yourself and you will keep finding more reasons for despair. Keep looking at Christ and you will keep finding more reasons for hope and joy. To move from being self-centered to being God-centered is like lifting our eyes from the dirt to the stars. To be self-centered is to condemn oneself to staggering around in circles getting nowhere in life. To be God-centered is like charting your destiny by the North Star.
Focus on Giving, not Receiving
In our desperation to fill the emptiness inside us we can fall into the hole of subconsciously devaluing people who are unable to meet our criteria for the perfect friend. It would be a tragic loss for us and for our victims if, for example, we become so focused on finding a marriage partner that we dismiss from our attention those who have no chance of meeting that need.
If you treasure people as God treasures them, you’ll not only lift them, it will rebound to you, adding fulfillment to your own life. We reap what we sow. So seek to give to others what you would like someone special to give to you. It is in giving that you receive.
A friend told me the following recently and I knew that even though I competed this webpage four years ago, I need to add his gem here. Rob writes:
Years ago I read about a young seminary graduate who had been praying for God to give him a church. Eventually the Lord said, “Don’t ever pray that prayer again!” He was shocked, and replied, “So, what should I be praying for?” The answer was, “Pray that I give you to the church of my choice.” I applied that change of orientation to my situation, and started praying that God would give me as a friend to whoever needs a friend. Thirty years later, I can say that I have never lacked for a friend, because we reap what we have sowed.
“Who Dares, Wins”
To continually expose yourself to the possibility of rejection is to be Godlike. He is perfect, and yet most people reject him. And because he truly loves, that rejection truly hurts him. No one knows the pain of a broken heart like him. Yet he is continually reaching out to people who despise him. And some eventually respond.
Be courageous. Take risks. To shrink from the possibility of pain is to shrink from life. That would be a tragic waste; not only for you, but for those you would have blessed.
Don’t Give in to Desperation
It is terrifyingly easy to sell your soul in a crazed attempt to find a quick fix for loneliness. History is splattered with the ruined lives of people who didn’t wait for God’s timing. Often they were heart-wrenchingly close to a divine breakthrough, but they chose not to hold on that little bit longer.
Your actions decide whether loneliness leads to honor or shame. To become entangled in unwise relationships is to sentence oneself to life-long regret. Not only is loneliness a test of character, it is a challenge in which there could be no higher stakes.
Act in haste and you could move from temporary loneliness to permanent remorse. Keep a clear head by continually looking to Jesus and you’ll win eternal honor.
Turn Being Alone into Life’s Richest Asset
Ever since he made humanity, the Lord has had two almost incompatible longings. One is to bless people and the other is to have a beautiful relationship with them. What makes these two longings clash is that when people are blessed with ease or riches or relationships they almost inevitably become preoccupied with these lesser things and miss the ultimate human experience – uninterrupted intimacy with God, the Perfect Friend.
When the Almighty has someone’s undivided attention, the possibilities are mind-boggling. This makes being alone a priceless opportunity for life’s most exciting adventure. Please don’t rob yourself of the opportunity to be alone with God by cluttering your life with the distractions of overwork, or too much television, internet, canned music, computer games, and so on. The great human tragedy is that most of us act as if the fizzle of instant gratification is more desirable than the eternal fulfillment of cultivating intimacy with the most wonderful Person in the universe.
Wrap-up
Loneliness is a tough feeling to fight. We can make it flee but it returns more often than we’d like. Nevertheless, we don’t have to give in. As you keep fighting despair and neither withdraw from people, nor act in unwise haste, you will reap the benefits now, and for all eternity.
The Bible shocks us by revealing that reality is spectacularly different to our superficial impressions. It declares that trials – such as battles with loneliness – though by their very nature highly unpleasant, are reasons for rejoicing, not sorrow. I used to think the Bible was saying, “Rejoice, even though trials are tragedies.” Finally, I began taking more notice of the context and discovered that it is actually saying something stunningly different. It is not saying, “Rejoice, despite the trials,” but “Rejoice, because of the trials.” It is saying, “Trials are a spiritual windfall. Throw a party when hard times come because they are like being given an exciting promotion at work, only exceedingly better. They increase your spiritual status, your contribution to the Kingdom, and your spiritual pay packet. By developing your character, tough times increase both your eternal reward and your ability to achieve things of lasting significance.”
The great illusion is that Christians enduring hard times seem to be hard done by. The astounding reality is that these people are actually receiving a priceless bonus. This is as staggering as hacking through someone’s chest, grabbing the flesh of his heart and claiming the victim is being blessed. Only someone who realized that the person is undergoing life-saving heart surgery would understand that the apparent cruelty is indeed a great blessing. Likewise, we are usually too unaware of the big picture to understand that loneliness can be a rich blessing. All we need do is keep handing the situation over to God and turn the dreariness of being alone into the wonder of being alone with God. From that springs everything worthwhile.
Related Pages
Cure for Loneliness? Feeling Unlovable, Undesirable & Unwanted
You Can Find Love: What Your Fantasies Reveal
Singles: Celebrate your Sexuality
How to be Free from Guilt (The first of several pages about this subject)
Becoming a Winner Breaking Habits You Hate
When Things Get Tough Encouragement when you most need it
You are loved! Enjoying God’s love
Not to be sold. © Copyright, 2004, 2008 Grantley Morris. Not to be copied in whole or in part without citing this entire paragraph. Many more compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings by Grantley Morris available free at the following internet site www.net-burst.net Freely you have received, freely give. 