Humanity, Thy Name is Loneliness
“Ah, look at all the lonely people” - Eleanor Rigby
The Beatles.
There’s this idea in churches, perhaps it’s just what I was taught growing up, that you will experience loneliness as a single person but once you're married that all fades away. Goodbye loneliness, hello perfect happiness. You are basically stuck living a less than stellar life as a single person, and until one can attain the life that is expected of you as a married person then you will have to resign yourself to living a life of loneliness.
However, once someone becomes married, they will experience a transformation to their soul where they will no longer experience any pain, sadness or suffering. Because they have a partner that loves them, loneliness will never exist. Even the word lonely will disappear from their mind and vocabulary completely, replaced with words such as completion, fullness, whole. Utopia has arrived.
Sadly, loneliness has no boundary lines. Loneliness affects children, teens, singles, couples, newlyweds, oldlyweds, divorcees, widows, widowers and the list goes on. Why?
Elisabeth Elliott at a Ligonier lecture said that “loneliness is not only a personal condition, but a human condition.” Loneliness is not just a single’s problem, it’s a human problem. It’s a reality for every human being who has walked the earth. For each of us there are areas of our lives that people are unable to reach, to connect with, to enter into.
Loneliness impacts us wherever we are. We can be at a party and feel utterly alone, we can come home from spending time with friends who love us dearly and feel utter sadness walking in the house. We can look across at our partner sleeping next to us and feel chasms apart from them. Loneliness is not unique, and affects everyone. So what do we do?
Here are some helpful thoughts and tips on how to care for those who struggle in loneliness:
I think one way we can care for those who struggle with loneliness is to be honest about our own struggles with loneliness. If you want to create relationships of care, then you have to lead the way yourself. Your honesty will draw others out with their own pain.
Don’t try to fix people’s pain with cliche answers. “It will be different once you're married.” - Ugh. So if I don’t get married, then what?
Don’t try to fix people by implying that marriage will take away their loneliness. Marriage is not the answer for loneliness. It can help, or it can even make it worse because my hope was in the fact that marriage would satisfy all my heart's desires instead of Christ.
Singleness doesn’t always equal loneliness. It’s rather funny, sometimes I don’t feel lonely in my singleness, until people come to me assuming that I should feel lonely in my singleness.
Listening and empathizing is way better than having the answers. Be slow to give answers and be quick to listen and understand. Don’t try to answer the “Why’s” of loneliness. We don’t always know why God allows these things to happen in each of our lives.
We do, however, have promises of what God does in the midst of our loneliness. That he is near to the brokenhearted (Ps. 34:18), that he keeps our tears in a bottle (Ps. 56:8), that he draws near to those who are outcast (Matt. 8:1), that Jesus calls us friends (John 15:15) and family (Matt. 12:48-50).
Move towards people, not away. Don’t shame them for feeling lonely, they already feel shame, don’t add to it. Would you shame Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asked the disciples why they fell asleep at the hour of his struggle and need? If Christ needed the comfort of an angel and his friends, who are we to think we are above the comfort of others?
Tim Keller says that the deepest desire that we want is to be Fully Known and Fully Loved. We can’t have one or the other, it has to be both. We can’t be loved if we are not fully known and it’s devastating to be fully known but not loved. We need to be faithful to do both.
Helpful Questions to Ask:
What is loneliness like for you?
What's the hardest thing about loneliness for you?
What has helped you not experience loneliness?
What do you do when you feel lonely?
Are there ways you’ve engaged God in your loneliness? What was that like?
How can we help walk through this with you?
Seek to create a home where people can come when they are lonely. That they never have to question whether it’s a good time or if they are inconveniencing you. Try to create a place where singles and family can live together in a synergistic way. Fight the reality that birds of a feather flock together. It’s natural for married couples to want to spend time with married couples so that their kids can play together. But I think married people don’t realize that singles also want to spend time with families as well. To go to their kids' birthday parties and baseball games. It seems as if there’s this invisible fence that keeps those married with a family separate from singles. And once you get married and have children then that fence is lifted and you are brought into new pastures. But you must have certain qualifications to be accepted into this pasture. The sense that you must have a certain life creates a deep despair that one will never know deep connection with people in the church because one hasn’t met the expectations of that so-called “pasture.” This shouldn’t be so. Jesus didn’t have a problem calling everyone his family so why should we? Perhaps because it takes work and it’s hard, and we are naturally selfish?
Ultimately though, this loneliness that we feel will not fully disappear no matter how much we try to find intimacy from friends and family. Augustine says that “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” We were created to find our deepest satisfaction in being known and knowing Christ. It is God that will ultimately satisfy us. The struggle is that we will only know a small ounce of that in this life compared to the eternity that awaits. I heard it be called a “holy longing.” This desire to be satisfied and a longing for it to come one day. It’s painful, it’s discouraging, it’s tiresome, and yet it’s hopeful as well. Ps. 16 says that there are pleasures at God’s right hand forever more. We are lonely because we desire an eternal Husband, we want to know the pleasures at the right hand of God, where Christ stands, waiting with bated breath to see his beloved.
We love, understand, listen, empathize, come around and encourage those who are discouraged. We draw near as Christ draws near, reminding them of the eternal Savior, who with the joy set before him, became human, was hated, shamed, despised, humiliated, judged, and condemned and died for our sake. This is the love we hold onto, it may not always feel satisfactory in the moment, but it’s the love we need most of all, and one day we will fully know it, as we are fully known. C.S. Lewis said that “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world… I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”
Elliott, Elisabeth, “Loneliness: We are Lonely Because We are Human”
Lewis, C. S., “Mere Christianity.”
