Loneliness and Community

Satan tends to wound us in our area of greatest strength, right?  Like if God created you to be an amazing musician and touch others through that gifting, the deepest emotional wounds you will receive will be to your musical ability or how others see your musical ability.  It only makes sense.  Well, all of my deepest wounds were given to how I interact with others.  The messages of those wounds - "You will never fall in love and have what your parents have" "Do not touch others, especially boys" "No one will ever like you" "Your friends will betray you and tell your deepest secrets to everyone" "No one understands you" "No one loves you"  "If you express how you feel to others, they will laugh and be embarrassed" "You will always be alone".  I've made some progress with refuting some of these lies (I know that they are lies at a mental level, but at an emotional level they feel so true).

This weekend, Satan has been hammering "You are alone" message at me, and though I know that it is not true, it feels true, it felt true yesterday.  One example (keeping in mind this is the third or fourth thing yesterday that made me feel like this), we had a service (Core) yesterday for the core group of students at my church, the ones who come to small group, team, church regularly and who are involved in the church.  I got there a few minutes early, as I had been a few doors down at the prayer room and left for Core ten minutes early.  And no one from my team was there, and neither was anyone from my sister team.  I sat there for eight minutes, all alone in an empty row, waiting for my friends to arrive and watching the rows in front of me fill with talking, laughing people.  And when some of them did arrive, a minute before Core started, they all sat in the row behind me.  I felt so alone.  After another three or four minutes, a couple of people from our sister team arrived and sat in front of their friends and next to me.  That helped a bit, but I was still hurting a lot.  Now some of this was excessive emotionalism (stupid hormones) but it's really an intensification of what I normally feel at church here at school.  Most of my friends, most of my team, are Meyers-Briggs Ps, or at least, nowhere near the level of J that I am.  I like things organized, punctual, and planned.  Ps are impulsive, roll with whatever comes up, and not super on time to things.  I am a J, to the extent that if someone has told me a plan and I have invested some time and effort into it, and then at the last minute things change, even if it's to shift the event to later in the day, I am upset.  I get anxious if I am going somewhere with someone and they cause us to be late.  I am rarely late to anything, often arriving exactly on time, or more usually, early.  I think of it as a matter of respect to show up before things begin.  And so when others don't respect my need to be on time, I feel very alone, and hurt.  And this happens often.  So I felt very alone and hurt yesterday because of this, in addition to the several other things that made me feel isolated from others.

That isn't to say that people didn't reach out to me yesterday at all.  One of the guys on my team whom I look up to and respect thanked me for sharing something vulnerable with the entire team a few weeks ago.  One of my friends on my sister team gave me a hug (granted, I had asked her for it) and then later in the day, asked on facebook if I was doing okay.  One of the leaders of the sister team came up and asked me how I was doing and really listened to my answer.  One of the guys on my sister team offered Alyssa and I a ride home in the snow, but we chose to walk because it was pretty out.  Gwen messaged me a great story of what happened at Ignition to her.  So people did reach out to me.  But it wasn't enough to fill the holes left by the things that made me feel so alone.  It wasn't enough to stop the loneliness.  And I think that if I'm honest with myself, I feel lonely more often than I admit, even to myself.  So often, I feel like I'm the strong one, the one holding others together, the one reaching out to my friends, the one encouraging and loving on others.  And even though I know it's not true, it feels like no one does it to me.  There are people who reach out and love me, encourage me, and it means more to me than they probably know.  But it's not enough to satisfy my longing for love and connection.  I'm not saying that I don't rely on God to satisfy my need for love, because I do, but I am also hardwired to need human love and connection, to need community.

I guess what I'm saying is that I need others, I need you, to encourage me right now.  Because I feel so alone.  And I feel really vulnerable needing others and asking them to meet my need.  (That's a whole other story, one that you are probably familiar with in your own life.)