By Chris WittsTuesday 2 Aug 2016Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 3 minutes
“I have no one to talk to here, and I just feel so lonely and depressed,” sobbed a lady on the phone to her friend. Eight months earlier, her husband’s company had relocated them from one city to another. She was a graphics designer who had her own home business.
“Since I work out of my home and don’t have an office to go to, I was hoping our new church congregation would be a good outlet to make friends. But after all these months, we still feel like outsiders at church. Most of the people there already have their friends, and they pretty much stay within their cliques. Hardly anyone has made an effort to get to know us. When I try to initiate conversations with others, usually they only give me a couple minutes at the most, and then they’re rushing off to be with their group of friends. After church, I can pretty much tell you which couples are going to go out to restaurants together—and we’re never included.” You may think this morning that should not happen to church people but unfortunately it does.
Many of us have encountered cliques and felt just as excluded, disconnected and lonely as this lady. But of course, there are many other types of circumstances that can bring on loneliness. You may be suffering the loss of a spouse by death or divorce. You may be shy and not feel confident interacting with others. You might be so busy with your career that you don’t devote a lot of time to relationships. You may live in a remote area, far from neighbours, and not have many visitors. There may be unresolved issues or misunderstandings that have alienated you from friends and family. Perhaps your kids have grown up and moved away and that has left a terrible void in your life. And sometimes you can feel lonely for no apparent reason; you just don’t feel like you can connect with the people around you. Is that your experience?
John Woodward is one of America’s leading researchers on loneliness. He’s a psychology professor at the University of Nebraska. He says “Loneliness touches everyone’s life to some degree”. He defines loneliness as “a feeling of isolation and separation from others.” It can result when a person is physically isolated from family and friends, or when a person is in a room full of people and feels totally disconnected. Loneliness can range from mild to severe and occur only occasionally or be a chronic problem.
Certainly God created us to be social creatures. All of us need a certain amount of “people contact.” (Some need more than others, depending on how extroverted they are.) So how do you cope if you’re in the unfortunate situation of feeling detached and lonely? Here are five suggestions for confronting this very heart-wrenching, yet common, human emotion.
It may not be easy to admit you’re lonely. After all, we live in a society where popularity is celebrated and encouraged. To admit you are lonely can seem like you are conceding to being unpopular and unwanted. Yet it is important that you acknowledge to yourself how you are feeling. Doing this will help you figure out what you need to do to overcome this problem. If you don’t, you’re in effect saying these issues don’t exist, and then they won’t be dealt with.