Being alone doesn’t have to mean being lonely or sad. Being alone means we have time to find out who it is God really wants us to be, to find true contentment in the gifts, talents, and blessings God has given us individually. To seek out the true purpose God has planned for our lives.

Yes, when we’re older and single, it’s hard to find someone who will stop and listen to us. To find anyone who will think to stop during the week, call us, and check to make sure we’re okay or see if there’s anything we need to talk about. But sometimes, it is our own responsibility to make someone listen to us. To pick up the phone and call a friend, someone we’ve been there for repeatedly, and say, “I need to talk, do you have time to listen?” Be sure to explain that you’re not looking for advice or guidance, just that you need to know that someone’s there to listen to you when something is going on in your life. You may find that there are some people who aren’t willing to do this for you. Yes, that will be hurtful. But it will also be a way of discovering the people who are truly your friends and not just those who are using you as a sounding board. And through that, you’ll start deepening your relationships with those few true friends and you’ll begin to feel your burdens lightening and joy slipping back into your life.

A question for you…(Maybe you can point me to another blog where you address this)…but do you have any thoughts on the churches role to serve singles? There is this whole new demographic of never been married singles in the church today. Some of which want to be married and some of which don’t want to feel any pressure what-so-ever. How would you personally like to see the church address this or not address this…? (-:

Thanks!

I believe that part of the problem in Western culture is that we’ve moved away from being a people who can publicly mourn. It’s almost like there was a backlash to Queen Victoria’s very public decades-long mourning for Albert—where we went from the idea that you had to take at least six months to a year to mourn for a death to where we now expect people back at work in a week or two. We don’t want to know that someone else is mourning or in pain (back then, the person would have been expected to wear black, or gray with a black armband, for that period of mourning)—it makes us uncomfortable because we don’t know the “right thing to say.” When the truth is that we don’t have to say anything except, “I’ll listen if you want to talk.” But because of that out-of-sight, out-of-mind mentality we’re taught not to show our emotional pain, which is what I believe has gotten us to the point we’re at now when we all know how to put on a happy face to go to church and say, “I’m okay” when someone uses the phrase “How are you?” as a greeting.