Cure for Loneliness

I want to first start out with this disclaimer. I am okay! I don't want to get lots of phone calls/text messages and comments of pity. We are all on a journey. We all felt this way at one time of another. I just helps me to write about it, and my journey to chose to not stay in it or dwell there. I have my good days and bad days just like you. I just tend to share my publicly through a blog sometimes. I don't share everything, but I also know that there is nothing new under the sun. There is nothing I have faced, am facing or will face, that someone else hasn't. I just know with topics like this I may get some text messages or phone calls or comments asking, "If I am okay." The answer is, "yes!" 

I'm a work in progress just like you. Trying to follow Jesus and be obedient to His call on my life...and with that sometimes comes rough days. One of my favorite sayings is, "One a good day I..." All that means is that when I am obedient and I go the source of my hope, security, love, value & worth...Jesus...I'm always...okay. ;) 

Packing up my entire life to move, not just out the home I grew up, but moving a whole state away was a huge leap of faith. I don’t think it entirely hit me that I was moving away from the only life I’d ever really known until suddenly I found myself in a place were I knew no one. I knew some people…the move wasn’t that random. I had moved to help with a church plant in Jacksonsville, FL called Restore Church, and serve in their student ministry.  But even with knowing a handful of people there were a lot of nights it was just me. 

I jumped into a job were I was suddenly working 45-hrs a week or more. I’d come home exhausted with hardly anytime to do what I actually moved to Florida to d. Little by little the loneliness began to creep in. Mostly at night when the world was silent is when my thoughts would begin to spiral. I was lonely and depressed, and before I knew it more and more of me wanted to retreat back to the life I knew—to go back to what was comfortable and familiar. I had prayed for this open door and now that I had it all I wanted to do was go back.

What helped pull me out of that place? What got me beyond dwelling on my own loneliness? Three things.

Word of God: The story of Moses and the Israelites. The Israelites had prayed for an escape from Egypt. For hundreds of years they prayed, and finally God saved them by sending Moses. Once free they headed towards the Red Sea. Their promise land that God promised was just on the other side. In that moment Pharaoh and his army were not too far behind in an effort to bring the back the slaves. Their they stood between a rock and a hard place—between their past and promised future God had for them. What did they want to do in that moment? Go back. They cry out, “did you bring us out here to die?” They cried that they’d be better off in Egypt; they’d be slaves but at least they knew what to expect day after day. Just at the moment when they wanted to turn back Moses puts his staff in the water by faith and watches God part the waters, and they walk across on dry ground & causes the waters to fall in on Pharaoh. 

God reminded me that story one night and continues to bring it to my mind when I want to run back to what comfortable. God reminds me in those moments, “If you go back you’ll miss the miracle of the Rea Sea.” God wants to part waters in my life and in your, and around us. But if we retreat back, it we isolate ourselves from the very people and places we were called to, we will miss the miracles!

Other People- The community of people that God placed me and you in are there to help encourage and lift us up. To help you bare the burden. To be your prayer warriors and help talk to you off the cliffs. They are there to be like Jesus to pull you up out of the water when you’ve become distracted by the winds and waves of circumstances—to help you walk on water again. My pastors (who were also my mentors and friends) and new friends have been the hands of Jesus in so many ways. To lift my head, bend their knees, and hold my hand when it’s harder than I ever imagined.

Vision- Vision is what sees you through the touch days. Without vision the people perish (i.e. feel hopeless or helpless). One of main keys God uses to cure me of loneliness in this season of my life is to remind me why I moved in the first place. To remind me of my purpose and calling on this earth—to bring to remembrance the gifts, talents, passions, and opportunities He’s given me to make Him known in my generation. Having vision—clear direction and why you are doing what you’re doing and were you’re headed—gives you the strength to no retreat inward, but instead to step out in faith and keep going.

Be intentional about building friendships and community. God comforts us, not so we can stay in our comfortable beds and through ourselves a pity party, but he comforts us so that we in return can comfort others. Feelings of loneliness are inevitable; it’s what we do in those moments that count. Will we chose to pull the covers over our heads, close our eyes and retreat inward or will be my faith get up and get out and live life? Trusting that God is sufficient in our weakness. 

As we speak, "Prince of Egypt" is on my Netflix and I love that the song playing says in the chorus, "Look at your life through Heavens eyes." Prospective is always going to key! :)