One thing that some of you may not know about me is that I constantly battle feelings of
loneliness. No, I don’t cry myself to sleep every night, pining for my true
love to come into my life so we can get married and have babies and live
happily ever after. It’s a different type of loneliness. I’ve found that even
though I have plenty of healthy relationships and people who care about me and
pray for me, I am unable to connect with others as deeply as I would like. A
few years ago, I discovered that this difficulty may simply be something that
most people with my personality type (ENFJ for the win!) typically struggle
with. Throughout this Summer, however, it has reared its ugly head in multiple
ways, which I will attempt to describe for your reading pleasure. From these
experiences, I found that my trouble may not actually be with loneliness, but
with a longing for intimacy. Please allow me to explain.
The first happening
occurred when I attend a friend’s wedding. In all of my infinite wisdom, I
chose to attend the event unaccompanied. After all, I’m confident in my
single-ness. Right? Well, when I arrived, I quickly realized that I knew a grand
total of three people there, including the groom. Even those people were acquaintances.
Throughout the night, however, I used my extreme extroversion (alliteration
alert) to engage in conversation with those around me. I felt as if I was
seducing people into conversations in which I did not belong, with the sole purpose
of appeasing my loneliness. Most were with extremely kind couples. As a
professional third wheel, however, I grew weary because I couldn’t shake the
feeling that I had been a nuisance to them, despite being assured of the
contrary. I also attempted to meet someone that I had heard many stories of,
but had never met. For some odd reason, I had the unrealistic expectation that
this person and I would have a conversation that would somehow delve into deep
emotional and intellectual territory. Instead, we shared greetings and the fact
that we had heard of the other one, and then parted ways. Overall, the night
was fun, but afterwards I felt an intense amount of not-enoughness and loneliness.
I simply couldn’t shake the feeling that I failed at connecting with others as much
as I desired. Every interaction at the wedding was happy, yet contained no
depth. The idea that I could go through life with no depth in my relationships
dawned on me and truly terrified me.
Around the
same time, a marriage that was relatively close to me began to hit rocky
territory due to infidelity. No details are necessary for me to express the
true gravity of the situation and its impact on my heart, life, and relationships.
After my stomach stopped hurting when hearing about this situation, I began to
ponder its implications. The first place
my mind and heart went is to marriage as a metaphor for Christ and The Church.
Yeah, yeah, I know... we have the story of Hosea. I know that we’re the ones who
are unfaithful to Christ. But in light of my recent loneliness, I kept
wondering if our broken marriages even have anything to do with our love affair
with Christ. I don’t ever want to be abandoned or cheated on by someone with
whom I’m so deeply connected. Have I closed myself off to Christ because I fear
this intimacy? How can our relationship become more intimate, despite my fears
that He could leave me at any moment. How do I trust His promises that He will
never leave me, even though that seems to be the prevailing example in
marriages that are falling apart around me?
A close
friend talked me through this struggle on the phone, and he said something
extremely wise. He mentioned that our relationships are essentially a broken
version of the perfect intimacy we will one day have with Christ. Could it be
that my loneliness and these broken relationships are due to a longing for intimacy that can only become complete when
we are united as one with Christ for eternity? Perhaps. During our
conversation, the word “intimacy” kept popping up. I felt like that is what I desire
in every relationship. I most certainly long for it in my relationship
with God. He also said that my struggle with loneliness was interesting because he perceives one of my greatest strengths to be my ability to connect
deeply with others. Perhaps Satan attempts to twist our greatest strengths into
our most intense struggles. One of my goals for the near future is to call out
Satan’s lies, and to proclaim God’s truth when I feel a lack of intimacy.
All this
talk of intimacy reminds me of the image in 1 Samuel 18:1 of David and
Jonathan’s hearts being knit together. My heart longs to be knit together with
not one, but many other hearts. As I enter into my time at Mission Year, I
truly hope that I can connect intimately with those I’m living along with those
I am loving in my community. I believe that God has called me to learn more
about and work toward a fuller sense of intimacy throughout my Mission Year. I
trust that Christ will show me more intimacy than I ever imagined both in our
relationship and in my connection with others. On that note, I wonder how I can
foster intimacy within my Mission Year family. Must intimacy be intentional?
How does Christ’s view of intimacy differ from the world’s perception? When I
revisit this blog post at the end of the year, I trust that I will have a greater
perspective on intimacy along with even deeper questions to accompany this
subject.
