When I have a feeling….

Russ and I have been serving with some other friends from our church at a memory care facility in our community. We go once a week and have a miniature church service. Songs, scripture, a brief devotion and communion fill the hour. 

My role has been to help hand out music sheets and find someone to sit next to. The past few weeks I have sat by a sweet lady in her late 80’s. She remembers me from the previous week, which is a contrast with the ones I reintroduce myself to weekly. 

She looks for me and is discontent if there is not a seat next to her wheelchair. She is always cold, always kind and always missing her family. She tells me about her mom and dad, her siblings and how she is the only one left. She has a son in the area with a family and they all come and see her, but she misses her family of origin. 

She tells me she is so lonely. 

Loneliness. 

I have heard it expressed recently by our Sweet Caroline when one of the brothers played a game and none of his teammate’s siblings were there. She wistfully said to her mom that she had no friends to play with. She was surrounded by people who love her but she felt lonely.

A few weeks ago, in two separate settings just a day apart, two different younger-than-me mom’s expressed the loneliness they feel sometimes because of (a) The season of life their family is in being different than others in their age group and (b) Schooling choices played out in a faith community they belong to where they are the only ones not like the others in the group. 

Loneliness. 

It’s not just being alone.

It’s feeling alone around people that we should be in relationship with but there is a disconnect. We are emotionally separated even as we try to interact with the people right in front of us. 

Loneliness can creep up on us in the middle of a really full life. Unbidden, we find ourselves whispering…I don’t have any friends right here in this moment to play with, and I feel sad. 

I don’t have any great solutions for it, but I certainly know it happens to me as well as you. 

In those moments, being the way I am wired to be, I find it best to just sit for a minute and acknowledge the presence of this unwanted emotion. Deep breaths, a quieting of the soul, a leaning into the God who made me, wired me, understands me and never leaves me is the safest place for me when a wave of loneliness creeps over me like a shadow. 

I remind myself of the others who have expressed their own feeling of loneliness and I lift each in prayer. Then I lift my head and look around for where I can serve. My family, a friend, the community; serving these helps fill some of the void. 

It prevents me from wallowing. It brings fresh air into stale places and pulls focus back to what is around me to tend and love. It reminds me that it’s not about me, and yet it is.

Acknowledging and accepting a feeling, examining it and then putting it in its proper place is a process that we must go through repeatedly. The feelings are real, but they must take their proper place in our perspective of life.

I recently resumed working on a Bible study I set aside in the busy season of last year. It is on the book of Philippians and has to do with choosing JOY. I drew the train above in the margin of my book and it is a great visual as I have processed these thoughts on the commonality of loneliness among us at all ages and stages. 

The quote that inspired my drawing says:

Feelings are like the caboose – they are important but are designed to follow a life of faith and obedience. -Bill Bright “Fact-Faith-Feeling”*
*Discovering Joy in Philippians; Pam Farrel & Jean E. Jones, Harvest House Publishers, 2019, page 41.

Blessings friends, as you wrestle with seasons or moments of loneliness. May you prayerfully examine your feelings in light of fact and then may God gracefully help you to aline them to follow your faith. Not ignoring them, but not being led by them. 

As always, you are dearly and deeply loved <3