Loneliness: How to Find Connection in a Disconnected World

In this episode, CCEF faculty discuss the different ways we can experience loneliness, particularly within church community. They explore the importance of recognizing and addressing these emotions, as well as finding ways to move toward those on the margins. They consider some helpful practices and insights on how to navigate loneliness, such as viewing others as family, taking one step at a time, moving outward, and being honesty before the Lord.

00:00 Different Experiences of Loneliness
07:57 Looking for Those on the Margins
14:37 Taking the Next Step in Friendship
19:50 Our Shared Position in Christ
28:07 Pivoting to the Lord & Pivoting Outward

Hi, welcome to Where Life and Scripture Meet, a podcast of CCEF. At CCEF, we restore Christ to counseling and counseling to the church. And I am here as your host, your co-host, Alasdair Groves. I'm here with Darby Strickland, Gunner Gundersen, and Esther Liu. Glad to have the gang back together here again today. Guys, let me open us up with a question. And the question is this: What do you do when you feel left out, when you feel excluded? We've all had those kinds of conversations with people. I think all of us have had that experience ourselves in different ways, I imagine. What do you do when you have that experience of feeling left out, outside the circle?

What's interesting is you're saying that Alasdair is, I often feel lonely when I'm around people, right? It's usually I feel my loneliest when I'm sitting amongst a group of people and I'm, I don't feel known by them or I'm watching them share a relationship that I'm not a part of. So even as you're talking about that, it's just, it's me being aware of, yeah, I'm recognizing I feel on the outside of something good and just even recognizing that often happens when, when I'm sitting with people in the body of Christ is when those feelings kind of creep up on me more often than not.

Even as you're saying that, Darby, it makes me think of how much social media maybe has played a role in increasing that sense of feeling left out, because you see people post on Instagram or Facebook and you realize, oh, I wasn't invited to that or oh, these people are doing these things without me. So even just appreciating how some of social media usage can lead to a sense of isolation or I'm not a part of something that's good that I would love to be a part of and the disappointment that can come with that.

I think the word feel can be really important for me because it just reminds me that some of the loneliness I can sense at times is real and based on some real differences or relational strains or other factors, but then sometimes it's more perceived and it's something that I'm overinterpreting maybe. And in that sense, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy where because I feel lonely, I maybe stay away, or because I think that I've been turned away somehow, I don't pursue. And so I think for me, discerning why I'm thinking or feeling this way can be helpful. It's not an immediate thing. It's not a light switch I can just flip on. It can take a little bit of time, but that's an important part of the process.

I think too, there's a reality that you can be, well, I guess I'm just coming back to what you started us with, Darby. You can be around people. You can have lots of connections. You can have lots of relationships. But either a lot of it's just very surfacey and you feel that, you're hungering for something deeper and all these surface-level interactions actually remind you or highlight for you like, yeah, I'd like something more than this. Or you actually can feel exhausted by the amount of social interaction you have, but part of it's because it doesn't feel like it's the easy, natural comfort and back-and-forth of a friendship. It feels like well I'm always on duty, either because you're in ministry and you're supposed to be pursuing and pouring into and you feel like my tank is emptying as I'm pouring into others. Or yeah, you just have a really social job. And anyhow, just thinking about the way that often you can feel isolated in ways that might be surprising to the people around you that might not be expected by those in your community.

I certainly think of someone who comes to mind who is really friendly and I think anyone who sees him would consider him popular, well-liked, a hub to the community. And yet it was sobering to hear him share once that he felt like he was around a lot of people, but when it came to when he struggled and when he was having a hard time, it felt like he had no one to go to. And that was such a sobering recognition for him that as he would be perceived as so well connected, that whenever things were hard, he felt the loneliest and felt like there was no one there to catch him when he fell. And that image has never really fully left my mind, but I imagine that there are a lot of people out there who come across well-connected and you wouldn't think that they're struggling with loneliness or feeling left out, but you don't, yeah, sometimes we just don't realize that people have different stories and different narratives playing out in their lives, that they could really be struggling with that as well.

One thing I often find myself wanting to highlight when we're talking about things that are hard is the right place of the negative emotion. If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you've certainly heard me and us talk about this, but just, being lonely is not a sin. Feeling hurt or discouraged by a sense of disconnection with other people, that's not a wrong thing to feel. Can we feel it for wrong reasons? Sure. Can we do bad things with it? Sure. But the experience of, I would really like to be more connected… The family of the people of God is a profoundly clear metaphor in Scripture. And Jesus talks about, you know, those who give up relationships and family and houses and so forth in this life wi'll have it restored to them 60, 100-fold, that kind of mindset of, the church is this place of embrace and it's this place of beautiful community and fellowship, that's the picture painted for us. And when you hear that and when you feel the contrast in your own experiences, like, I don't feel connected at all, I feel most isolated on Sunday morning or Wednesday night at community group, or I feel like I want to be known, I want friendship and connection and I don't know how to get it. Or when I reach out, it doesn't seem like it's there. There's just something profoundly disappointing and sad, and there's a grief that many people I've known have experienced. And part of the hope of us having a conversation like this is thinking, what do you do? How do we go forward in the midst of that? But I think you have to always start at the level of, it's appropriate to be discouraged when Scripture paints something beautiful and your experience is something really different that feels really less than that, feels painfully, grievously not like the picture you see that Scripture holds out of, this is what God's intention and invitation to us is.

I think I’ve found it really helpful to myself in thinking about even before the fall, God says it really clearly: It's not good to be alone. And that's just how he made us. He made us for connection. And Scripture puts it so simply, and it's a pre-fall reality that we are created for community. It's part of how we were made and designed. It makes sense of our longings in a way that's just an encouragement to me. That it’s something that God has designed. And it's something that I should be longing for. That just gives me more to be encouraged about than discouraged when I'm feeling that way.

Darby, you kicked off with just opening your own heart right out of the gates here of just, hey, here's an experience I can have. What's been helpful to you? Where do you go with that, Darby? What do you do in your own mind or soul in those situations? What's been helpful to you that others have done in those moments?

That's a great question. I'm in my early 50s, as I like to say. Not mid yet, just definitely early 50s. Which is just putting me in a different social setting in church. Like the churches that I've attended, they tend to have more younger... The nexus of activity is around younger women with young children. And so I've just noticed it's definitely different and harder to connect naturally with people who are in a different life phase than you. And so one thing I've just recognized is I find it missional actually, I want to go after people who are on the fringes. So one way that I've worked to, yeah, I don't know how to put it, but you don't feel of value in your community when you're different. Like people aren't saying to me, hey, you've raised kids and I have these toddlers and we'd love to connect for some advice. It's more, you just feel like you don't belong in that set of people, which just feels really silly to me. So I've just decided instead of concentrating my efforts on that feeling, I'm trying to look for people more like myself who are on the fringe, who are the single women, who are the recently widowed, and just trying to move towards people that also don't have these natural connections within the body of Christ. And I've found some of those conversations to be just so life-giving on a Sunday morning, even if they're only five minutes, but it did take quite a correction in my own thinking to be able to do that because I so wanted to long, I was longing to be valued by community, if that makes sense, and feeling like I was fitting in, versus saying, no, it's my job to help other people here fit in. And that wasn't a quick pivot. It was the Lord did some deep heart work there. But I really just see it as more missional. And it's awkward, it's not easy. And, you know, I'm often in conversations where I don't know how to, you know, because you don't have so much in common with someone. I've had to learn to be uncomfortable in some spaces to do it, but it has been really sweet.

Darby, that reminded me that I think there's a very different conversation that would come from a different question, which is we ask, you know, what to do when you feel left out. If I ask myself the question, what to do when others feel left out, it's a very different mindset. And I remember our colleague Ed Welch once saying many years ago that Jesus seemed to spend his ministry zigzagging back and forth to the margins of society. And I've never forgotten that image.

That's where he spent his time. And I know my heart has not wanted to be on the margins. It's wanted to be in the center. But I think that's really important, Gunner, because that's where he spent his time.

Yeah, I love that so much, Darby. I think as you share, it makes me thankful and reminds me of my own season of navigating feeling left out and not quite fitting in. I think one of the ways that the Lord met me was very similar in the sense of, I was very discouraged by the lack of relationship and connection that was being forged. I knew what the best of Christian community could be, and I didn't feel like I was experiencing that. And that was hard to go in week-in and week-out and just not feel like what I wanted and hoped for was happening connection-wise. But I remember after months of that reaching similar to you, like a pivot point, where I said, you know, my one goal today, going to church, talking to myself as I was driving to church, is I'm going to love one person. I'm going to love one person by looking at one person in the eye, asking them, how are you doing? And really meaning it. And regardless of where that conversation goes, regardless of the outcome, regardless of if that conversation ends up crashing and burning and awkwardness, whatever happens, regardless of the outcome, my one goal is to love someone and to love someone sincerely, in the same way that the Lord pursues me, the call to pursue others. And I just remember that took off a lot of pressure of trying to control outcomes when it comes to fitting in and getting plugged into community, because so much at the end of the day is out of our hands. There is so much that can be in our hands and there is so much that can be out of our hands, honestly. And it was just a very sane response to be like, I will do what I can. I will do what I'm able to do and know that the Lord takes pleasure in that. I think that was the big thing for me was I could feel so disappointed in myself for not performing a certain way socially and not accomplishing my goal of connection and deep community. But to know that the Lord took pleasure as he watched me take those baby steps towards people was really meaningful, and I felt connected to the Lord as I was doing that, even in the midst of feeling disconnected from the people around me. So I'm really thankful you shared kind of your own journey of pivoting and can relate to how long that journey was, but also how beautiful that journey ended up being too.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate what you're saying there is we can't force friendships. And loneliness is not a problem that we can solve, right? It's not like we can make a budget; if I put this much investment in or if I do this. It's that our relationships are organic and they're gifts and we can foster them. But like you're saying, we can't guarantee outcomes. I think which, in my own sense, that gives me more anxiety. Because I want to foster friendships, but we can't. And there's this weird reciprocalness that we're not in control of. Yeah.

One thing my wife has often said that I've really appreciated, a mindset she has articulated that's been helpful to her, I know, and I've just watched and appreciated in her is talking about like, who's at my gate? Who has the Lord brought next to my path? Because I think sometimes either we can fixate on like, I need to be friends with this person or this is the group I need to be a part of or this is the kind of friendship I need to be in. And so often I feel like the Lord may be bringing other things, other relationships, which, you know, maybe not, you're not even alert to like, I could actually be a friend with somebody in a totally different generation or life stage than me, you know, to your point, Darby of like, yeah, I might have to be willing to be uncomfortable. And there might be this opportunity that's there, but I'm just not even alert to if I'm thinking, well, like to be a friend, I have to have X, Y, and Z in this situation. And so just her phrase, my wife's phrase has been, who's at the gate? Who has the Lord brought to me? And being willing, being open to say, you it's not about being friends with the people who are going to make me feel the best. It's about who has the Lord brought? And I think maybe the other piece for me that's been helpful is just being willing to see things in terms of little steps. And if I had to say, what's my one practical takeaway from a conversation on the experience of exclusion, loneliness, etc., it would just be, what is the one next step I can take in this relationship, in any relationship? And that one next step with a visitor at your church on Sunday morning is to say, Hi, my name is Alasdair. I haven't seen you here before. What's your name? You know, that's step one. And I think sometimes we can feel like we know how to take step one, if we're willing to be bold and stick out our hand, which in and of itself is actually hard a lot of the time. But we don't know often what I think steps two, three, four, five are. So we know what step ten looks like, which is like, hey, our family is gonna go on vacation together for a week and we're gonna be best friends and we're gonna write long letters, and whatever it is that your view of the ideal friendship would be. But step six is a mystery. Step four is a mystery. What's that thing? And so I think for me, especially as I've been working on a writing project about men and having deeper conversations, just thinking like, what is one step of either further genuine curiosity I can have about this other person's life and asking a question that invites them to say something more significant, or something I can share, a way that I can put something on the table that is, yeah, closer to the center of my heart rather than further out on the boundaries of the world that I don't care as much about. How can I either say or ask about something that matters just a little bit more? And how can I go one step further with whoever? And seeing that as an open-handed, not like here's the one person I'm doing that with, but how can I be, whoever's at my gate, which might be 50 people in a given week in various stages, most of them are at level two, but maybe there's one place that's at level four. What's it mean for me to just advance that conversation, that opportunity one step and see what happens?

Alasdair, one kind of rubric that's helped me at times has been factual, personal, spiritual, just understanding that usually the first step in a conversation is something factual as you mentioned. Hi, my name is Alasdair. What's your name? Or I haven't seen you here before. And over time it can…

You would probably want to go with Gunner rather than Alasdair in that conversation. Just a thought, you know.

And it shifts then, right, to something more personal, or it can. And then it shifts maybe into things related to our spirit and vulnerabilities and things we're excited about and just that openness that I think, as you mentioned with your illustration of the family vacation together, that openness and comfortability with one another, which is a beautiful picture of the kinds of relationships that I think we all hope for at our best. And it just helps me to realize I do need to start usually with the sense of the facts of someone's life, but I do hope that I can transition and turn corners and they will as well into things that are a little bit more personal to us and then shifting into hopefully a spiritual intimacy over time. But I also know like friendships happen on a spectrum and relationships happen on a spectrum, meaning I'm just going to have different relationships with different people. And that's one thing that the Lord is continually teaching me to try to accept, while I want to pursue, I want to invest, I want to honor the biblical ideal of the closeness that we want to have, the oneness, especially as the body of Christ, but also not holding people to an expectation or even myself for deep friendships everywhere that may not be realistic, even in terms of just my finiteness as a person and theirs too.

Gunner, I was thinking this morning actually with a friend at breakfast about John 15 and the vine and the branches and just what it is to be connected organically to Christ and to have his life flowing out into me and how that changes me. But then also, if I'm connected to this vine and every other branch on that vine, there's a certain depth of connection there. Gunner, you were saying something earlier. You had an analogy that you have sometimes used with others in terms of picturing family and how to think about, a mindset shift of how to think about other people. Will you share that again? I thought that was such a helpful shift in mindset, in particular in sort of a church, you know, Sunday morning gathering context.

Yeah, it really helps me when I start with our shared position in Christ and who we actually are in Christ before the Father as a church body. And so when I think about the church as a family, I just think this is actually a family reunion every time we gather. And there may be people here that are part of this family that I don't actually know yet or know well yet, but they are already part of my family. And so based on that existing relationship that's established in Christ, let me pursue them and get to know them. And I think of it like if you discovered that you had a long lost twin you were separated from birth from, and if you met that person, you would immediately think, we have all this in common and we have this whole backstory, but I just haven't known you yet. And I am eager to get to know you. I want to know what happened. I want to know about your life. And you would probably assume that person would had some desire to know about yours. And there would just be an immediate sense of curiosity and interest at the very least and to know that that's really where we stand with one another in Christ. It just really helps me to begin to pursue people in that way. I think a great illustration of this for me was I know of an adoptive mother who was out with her many kids at a restaurant. And she had some adopted kids and some biological kids, and a server came up and the server asked, are all these kids yours? And the mom said, “Yeah, they're all mine.” But they were very obviously like ethnically different and genetically different. And, so the mom says, “Yeah, they're all mine.” And the server says pretty audaciously, “Well, you know what I mean.” And the mom looked at her and said, “And you know what I mean.” And that has been such a great reminder to me of when we look at one another in the church, we really are spiritual siblings. We really are the family of God, that we come from different places into this family. And when I remember that, it really helps in the way that I approach and view people.

Which I think is a really important frame to have on, right? Because it's tempting to focus on how you're feeling in the moment, right? Like I'm feeling rejected, I'm feeling left out. There must be something wrong with me, people don't like me, right? It just becomes really tempting to think about ourselves and what's wrong with us and probably even wrongly accuse ourselves and shame ourselves and speak horrible untruths about who we are. Versus if we're looking at, this is my family. My eyes are outside of myself, and I'm looking at something other than trying to interpret, misinterpret actually, who the Lord made me to be. And so I think that's a really helpful frame, because it gives something other than my own failings, which I can easily rattle off; they're not interested in me because blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So yeah, I just think that's really helpful to turn us towards loving others and away from ourselves.

Yeah, I think of how easy it is when it comes to this particular issue of trying to find fault somewhere, whether it's we want to blame other people, like, they should be doing more or they should be pursuing, they should reach out more and they're not. Or Darby, like you were saying, and what I probably resonate with personally is blaming myself and being like, oh, there's something wrong with me, I must not be doing this right, I must not be good at this, and the reason why I feel disconnected is because I'm this X, Y, Z and kind of spiral in the shame. And I've just found that so much of that energy can be trying to find fault somewhere, whether it's the other people are doing me wrong or it's I'm doing myself wrong. But how much of a, again, pivot it was for me to realize that rather than being so preoccupied with blaming someone, simply grieving what is and that this isn't necessarily what I wanted and what I hoped for, but it is what it is now. And how can I walk in that with courage? How can I walk in that knowing the Lord is with me? How can I walk in that learning how to love amidst all those differences and those limitations that I'm recognizing that I have and that others have? And prayerfully seeking the Lord and bringing those things to him. I feel like that's been really helpful because I do get lost in the blame game when it comes to these issues, and there are different directions to go. There's someone to go to vertically who has beautiful things to say to people who feel lonely and excluded and left out.

That little verse in John has been helpful to me that Jesus came to his people, but his people did not receive him. Like he knows what it is to be, he went through all this effort to come to us, to love us. And as he was here, he knew really intimately and personally what it was to be rejected and not received. So it's something that it's easy to talk to him about because he has experienced it.

It’s really striking to me that story in Luke 4 where Jesus is rejected from his hometown in Nazareth. You know, the John 1 that you mentioned, Darby, is this overarching sense of coming in the incarnation. And then there's also this really gritty hometown experience where he's thrown out and they try to kill him. And the Lord still uses that to move him to Capernaum, and there he's right beside the lake and has this ministry in this high traffic area and the Lord does incredible things through that. But so striking to see someone rejected by their own hometown where he grew up and perhaps already experiencing that for quite a long time with the circumstances surrounding his mom's pregnancy and all the misunderstanding and things that would take place with that. So I'm so thankful for that. And I love some of these other stories in the Bible. I just, when I think about this topic, I'm reminded of how many people were or felt alone in the Bible, and Esther when you were sharing, was thinking of 2 Timothy 4, where Paul says that at his first defense, no one stood by him or all deserted him. And then he says, but the Lord stood by me. And I love that balance where he's able to actually articulate what did happen, that he really was left alone, he really was deserted and he could recognize that. And it was painful and disorienting. At the same time, he could say, but the Lord stood by me. And then he appeals to these ancient stories from the past where he says, I was rescued from the lion's mouth, which reminds you of certainly Daniel in Daniel 6 being very alone. And in this situation where he's also been rejected at the risk of his life. And so remembering how the Lord has stood by other people is a great reminder for me. And I need that, as you said, in order to often have the comfort and the strength to go out and move towards other people and not just sit there in silence and let that become the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yeah, it's so tricky because paradoxically, ironically, the easiest thing to do when you feel alone is actually the least helpful. And the easiest thing to do is to focus in on my sense of loneliness and to zoom in on, this doesn't feel right or good. And whether that's I'm blaming myself, whether I'm blaming others, whether I'm just desperate to do something to not feel this way. Like the more my focus is on how I'm feeling about it, the harder it is to simply do the kinds of things we're talking about, moving out towards others. I think of that Tim Keller, I don't know if, book is probably too big, it's a booklet called The Joy of Self-Forgetfulness or The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. I forget whether it's joy or freedom, but either implies the other. And just that idea that we're actually, we're at our most free, we're at our most joyful, fulfilled, when we're least focused on me and who I am and how I'm feeling and how is it going for me, that ability to turn outward is so freeing for us. That doesn't mean that like, that doesn't mean that feeling lonely is selfish or self-centered. Like we were all saying, there's a genuineness to that experience. But the way out, the way forward, the not even the way out, the way of of faithfulness and of hope in the face of it is, yeah, a move outward. And I just think about how much of Scripture invites us to pour out our hearts and to share what's going on and how the Psalms are that invitation with the Lord and Romans 12:15, you know, rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. That just captures this picture of sharing our hearts and of hearing others' hearts. I mean, Romans 12:15 focuses on when someone is rejoicing, when they are mourning, move toward them, share your heart in that, get inside their experience. But also implies, and that is what we are to do, that's what we get to do with others, is to speak from our own hearts and pour our hearts out to the Lord and to each other. And all of that is so right and so good. And the hardest way to move into any of that is the more that our enemy can make us spiral in on ourselves and how we can feel differently, the harder it is to actually do the things that lead towards a different experience. Or at least that's been a common theme I've seen.

Yeah, I think that's really crucial to the pivot. The first pivot is taking those feelings to the Lord directly. Like, I feel alone, I feel cast out, I feel rejected. And he can say, you belong to me. And then when he comforts that, that gives us the ability to make the second pivot, and that's outward. But I don't, I think we have to make sure, at least reflecting on my own comments here, that first pivot is so important. Like I can't just pivot towards others if I haven't pivoted towards the Lord and brought the heavy and the hard and the disappointment and my tears and anguish over what it feels like sometimes to be in a church family and not feel a part of it. And then, but the Lord says to me, but you belong, you're mine, you're precious, you're cherished, I know what it's like for you. And like we can grieve together and that allows me then to pivot outwards. And I just think that's a hard, it takes a lot of emotional honesty to do all of that, right? It's easier just to be grumbly or complain than to go through all those emotions saying, this is how I'm really feeling.

I think that is so important, Darby. I love the language of pivot, and I love that the first pivot is to the Lord. That's where the hope and help comes from, to move towards others. Guys, we've spent a little while chatting about this, and I think, Darby, your last comment there is a great one for us to close on. But Esther, could I ask you to just pray over this? This is just a delicate thing, and I imagine many who are listening to us will resonate with some of the experiences that we've shared from ourselves and from others. Will you just pray for those pivots, for the Lord to strengthen them in us and take these things on everyone's behalf, ours and those who listen? Will you take these things to the Lord for us?

Yeah, I'd love to. Let's pray. Father, we're thankful for this opportunity to bring this topic that is personal to so many to you. And to ask for your help in the midst of these struggles for those who are listening, who are struggling with feeling lonely, excluded, left out in some shape or form. We ask that you would make your nearness known to each one of them, each one of us today. Father, the things that we talked about here, it's not lost on me that to move towards community when community hasn't felt the easiest is one of the hardest things that we could do and requires so much courage to show up, to persevere, to keep going, to keep taking those baby steps towards people when it feels vulnerable, when it feels like it might be fruitless, when it feels like there's been so much hurt and baggage already. It's a courage that we can't muster up on our own. And so Father, I pray that you would be gracious to each one of us, that you would give all of us, whether we feel excluded or not, the fortitude to be able to persevere in the kind of love that you have demonstrated to us. A love that pursues, a love that sees, a love that perseveres. Father, you know what each one of us need. You know that there are many of us who are longing for the sweet gift of community. And we know that you have different ways and different timings of answering those prayers. But we bring those desires to you and ask that you would be gracious in the midst of it. And I pray, God, that at the end of all days, that as we look back on our lives, that we would be able to see all the stories, even of loneliness, of exclusion, of disappointment, and we could say with Paul, “but the Lord stood by me.” May that be true of all of our lives. And we pray these things in the name of Christ. Amen.