Loneliness

"The greatest disease . . . is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.” – Mother Teresa

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty–it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”

– Mother Teresa

Stars hid behind the thick clouds releasing their white specks of snow as I paced the lonely street. Darkness swallowed the halos of amber light, hanging high above. The dark enveloped me, both outward and within. I scanned the streets, searching for life, but unlit houses mirrored my loneliness. At midnight, I should have been at the home I shared with friends, but they were out, and the sound of my empty room chased me out of the house.

I zipped my winter parka up and nestled my chin within. Forgetting to bring my mitts, I shoved my hands into my pockets. Crunch, crunch, crunch. I had no destination, except to escape the frequent, eerie invasion suffocating my heart. A car passed, carefully maneuvering through the snow-covered road. Please stop and talk to me. It swerved on, its fading tail light answering me.

Steadily, I trudged through the unshoveled sidewalk. My head, bent down, attempted to hide from the attacking pellets. I plowed forward, criss-crossing side streets through the city. Each breath stung my lungs like pinpricks of shards of glass. Finally, I stopped. Spent from attempting to outpace the lonely invasion, I turned for home. It didn’t work. It never worked. I crawled into bed in the middle of the night and let exhaustion blanket my sorrow.

Photo by Atharva Tulsi on Unsplash

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God took me down memory lane today, somewhere I really didn’t want to go. He showed me if unworthiness was my brain on autopilot, then loneliness acted like its engine. Loneliness has paralyzed me on many occasions. Even in a room full of people, loneliness wrapped its ugly, long, cold fingers around my heart and squeezed, leaving me gasping for air.

One definition of loneliness is being alone, secluded, or in solitude. This type of loneliness is not bad. We all need time for ourselves to grow and reflect on life. Introverts, especially, recharge after spending time alone. However, when feelings of loneliness overtake you with sadness and despair, making you feel like you’re drowning, there is something wrong.

Adulthood loneliness is one common outcome of early childhood rejection. In her blog post, The Link Between Childhood Trauma and Adult Loneliness, Denise Ambre writes about the devastating effects of trauma from childhood rejection. She explains that attachment issues, a lack of love and constant criticism from caregivers puts children at a high risk of loneliness as adults.

Loneliness is a vicious cycle. Ambre explains how these experiences contribute to problems in relationships. In my own past, I could see the repetition of unsuccessful attempts to have lasting meaningful connections. Ambre continues to describe how this then leads to chronic feelings of loneliness. Individuals who have difficulty forming healthy emotional connections are, therefore, more likely to feel chronic and/or intensified feelings of loneliness.

Often, I made decisions to lessen the pain from loneliness by seeking love and acceptance in the arms of another. It never worked. Rather, it led to more unhappiness and pain. I can remember one heartbreaking experience. After being with a man, physically, that I barely knew, I began to weep uncontrollably and couldn’t stop for hours. The feelings of love and acceptance that I had craved left me, instead, with emptiness and shame.

Where was God through all of this? I reminded Him over and over again that He was the one who declared in Genesis 2:18 that it is not good for humans to be alone. I felt like He was ignoring me. What I didn’t understand, though, was that the degree of loneliness I endured was not normal and I needed help.

On the Campaign to End Loneliness website three different types of loneliness are described: emotional, social and existential. Emotional loneliness describes the absence of someone close, like a partner or a friend. For me, the absence of a husband was felt intensely throughout my life, but these feelings were magnified because of the rejection I endured as a child.

Social loneliness, also known as reactive, means a lack of a social network, like friends, neighbors or colleagues. I moved a lot in my twenties and thirties, never spending more than two consecutive years in one place until I was thirty-six years old. It was difficult to establish this type of social network and I suffered because of it. Lonely nights blurred into one another.

Existential loneliness is the feeling of being separate from others, even if one is within a social group. While at work I often felt left out and lonely. I always felt invisible and empty inside. I avoided social events as much as possible, but this fueled my loneliness.

The Campaign to End Loneliness further describes loneliness as a transient feeling that can come or go, or a situational feeling that may occur during the holidays, for example. Loneliness can be defined as chronic, which means daily bouts of intense and traumatizing loneliness. Chronic loneliness is the hardest to overcome.

When loneliness strikes it is an overwhelming feeling of isolation. If I didn’t keep myself busy, I soon felt overcome with feelings of sadness. The feelings were so powerful I couldn’t process information. I often felt shame for feeling this way, and this view kept me from sharing how I felt with others.

King David in the Bible experienced intense loneliness after sinning. Chaim Bentorah uses this example in his word study of the Hebrew word, yachad. After sleeping with Bathsheba, and later sending her husband, Uriah, to his death, David suffered the pain of feeling separated from God. In Psalms 25:16 he cried out to God, “Turn to me and be gracious to me, For I am lonely and afflicted.”

The Hebrew word for loneliness is yachad. In his study of the word, Chaim Bentorah gives a fuller understanding of this meaning. He explains that yachad means loneliness and unity. Bentorah believes that even though we are in unity with God we can still feel loneliness because of sin. Bentorah writes,

“ . . . we are created in God’s image and if we feel lonely without his presence, how must God feel when He cannot manifest his presence with you. He too feels lonely, He understands loneliness.”

Considering that God would feel lonely because He can’t commune with me was a foreign concept to me. Somehow it helped me to see that He wasn’t to blame for my state of loneliness, but instead was full of sorrow because we weren’t in unity. The idea comforted me. I knew I needed to bridge the gap from feeling lonely and opening myself up to receive His love.

Chronic loneliness is difficult to overcome on your own. I spent years trying, without success. Whenever I found myself alone in my house the pain of loneliness hit hard. The silence of the empty room taunted me, ‘You are alone, alone, alone.’ Quickly, I’d turn music on, but it wouldn’t erase the emptiness. Desperately I paced the kitchen, my heart racing. Scanning the clock that hung above the stove, I questioned, ‘Had it not moved? Is it broken?’ I tried going for a walk or busying myself with chores, but loneliness attached itself like leprosy.

What is God’s perfect plan? He does say in Genesis 2:18 that it’s not good for man to be alone, because it isn’t. God created Adam to be in unity with Him. But God saw that Adam needed another human for companionship, therefore He created Eve. This doesn’t mean that we all need to find a partner, though. Paul, the Apostle chose to stay alone to focus only on God. However, we do need people. We need friends, family and connections with other people.

God promises in James 4:8 that if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. When I was in my early twenties my pastor encouraged our congregation to meditate on this verse. I remember washing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees repeating this verse over and over again. Nothing happened.

I couldn’t understand why God wasn’t drawing near to me. Where was He when I needed Him the most? It wasn’t until I read the book, Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence that I began to understand that drawing near to God is a continual form of communing with Him, as a personal being, experiencing His peace and love that comes with His presence. This changed my focus and helped me to seek a relationship with Him.

Still, even having a deep personal connection with God may not completely heal all of your inner wounds. You may still feel, like I do, that you’re stuck behind thick glass. Becoming aware of the cause of your loneliness, though, is essential to your healing.

Currently, I have experienced some healing of chronic loneliness through many different methods and over a considerable length of time. I no longer feel the depth of the empty, agonizing void of being alone. Lasting feelings of happiness have started to come after counseling sessions, research, as I routinely seek God, and truthfully express remorse over my past sins as God has revealed them to me.

I strongly encourage you to seek professional help if you have experienced childhood rejection and are experiencing chronic loneliness. I am not a trained counselor, doctor, psychologist or psychiatrist, but I care about you and want you to find the same freedom I've found. You can pray and ask God where to go and who to see. Listed below are suggestions that may assist you on your path to recovery, as they have me.

Steps to overcome loneliness:

1. Pray. Always, our first method of healing has to come from God himself and this can be done through prayer. Ask Him for guidance as you go through this healing process.

2. Commune with God. Take your prayer life one step further by thinking about God, feeling His closeness to you and talking to Him on a regular basis, in any and every situation that you are in. By communing with God, cracks will appear in the thick glass keeping you bound.

3. Recognize and be prepared for a possible slow road of recovery. Although God can heal miraculously, that is only one of the many ways that healing happens. Healing inner wounds is often a process.

4. Begin to make stronger connections with others. Ask God to show you who you can reach out to for friendship or support. Consider being a companion to someone else who needs it. There are several older people who feel isolated, for example.

5. Be kind to yourself. Celebrate the successes that you make, even the tiny ones.

Let’s pray: Lord, turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from my anguish. Look on my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. Please, Lord, I cannot do this alone. Help me not to just know that you are here with me, but to feel your presence as well. Teach me your ways. I choose to lean on you and not in my own ways (From the cry of David in Psalms 25:16-18).

Application: Make a list of five places you can go to if you are feeling lonely. You don’t have to converse with anyone, but going to a place where there are people helps one to feel less alone. Some that are on my list are cafes, the library or my neighbor’s house.

Journal Prompt: Write about a time when you felt lonely. Picture God beside you and holding you in His arms, promising He will never leave you or forsake you. Release your sadness to Him. Describe how you feel now.

Endnotes:

Quote: Mother Teresa, A Simple Path: Mother Teresa. (Ballantine Books, 1995)

Psalms 25:16 (NIV)

Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God. (Grand Rapids: Revell/Spire Books, 1967)

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Read my Introduction to BEHIND THICK GLASS: A 30 Day Journey Moving Out of Rejection and Into God’s Love Read Day 1 Distrust Read Day 2 Worthlessness