Recently, I watched an episode of Touched By An Angel, a TV show about angels who help people on earth. That particular show inspired me to write about loneliness. The episode was about a lonely, desperate woman named Zoey. She had recently been dumped by her boyfriend and she was feeling as if she’d never find a man who would want to marry her. She longed for a husband and children. She was tired of coming home every night to a lonely apartment.
One night when Zoey was leaving a bar with a man of questionable character, two angels, Monica and Andrew, stopped her. Then Monica gave her a message from God. She told Zoey that love isn’t something you shop for and she’d never find her ideal man in a bar. “To find the right man, you have to become the right woman,” Monica said. She was suggesting to Zoey that she fill her lonely life with giving love to others. She told her to trust God and wait for His timing to bring the right man into her life.
At the end of the show, Zoey was sitting outside on a beautiful summer day talking to an elderly woman in a wheel chair. She had become a volunteer companion for residents at a rest home. She had taken her angel’s advice.
The loneliest time in my life was after my divorce. I was so lonely that I longed to have my old life back. I wished that I had stayed married. An unhappy marriage seemed better than the loneliness I felt as a newly single mother. The first night in my new apartment, I cried until I was exhausted.
For two years, after my divorce, I lived as an unmarried, unhappy woman. The choices I made during that time weren’t the best choices. Once again, like I did in my early twenties, I pursued a social life in bars and night clubs. Every weekend my girlfriends and I went out dancing and drinking, hoping to find Mr. Right.
If I had it to do over, I would have filled my loneliness with community service not smoke-filled bar rooms. I would have been less desperate and trusted God to bring the right man into my life. Those two years I spent shopping for a man after my divorce could have been better spent. Working on becoming the right woman instead of looking for the right man attracts men of better quality. The good guy actually finds you while you're busy loving others.
But you don't have to be single to be lonely. Some of the loneliest people are married. Maybe it's a lack of communication or a lack of kindness, the reasons for a lonely marriage are many. Sometimes the loneliness is a result of wishing for more freedom or wanting your single days back. When that obsession takes over your mind, you become discontent and see the blessings in your life as burdens.
Satan loves to destroy families by filling married people's minds with the belief that they missed out on sowing their wild oats. Maybe they married young and never got to "enjoy" the single life. Then after a few years of marriage, the responsibilities become burdensome and they want to break free and have fun like their single friends. It's a recipe for disaster in a marriage and it could lead to the kind of loneliness Zoey felt when her angels intervened.
The following advice comes from an adaptation of the book, Loneliness by Elizabeth Elliott. Her words are poetic and full of truth:
“The answer to our loneliness is love- not our finding someone to love us, but our surrendering to the God who has always loved us with an everlasting love. Loving Him is then expressed in a joyful and full-hearted pouring out of ourselves in love to others. As I find my place of service within the community of God’s people, there is little time left to be lonely. For me the answer to loneliness is not to solve it, but to embrace it as a gift from a loving Father and to offer it back to Him, so that He can transform it into a gift for others. Knowing that my aloneness comes from the hand of a loving Father enables me to receive it as a gift, not a curse.”
Loneliness is a gift? I think what the author means is that it’s an opportunity to give something of yourself to the world. When we finally do marry and have children, we become so busy with our own lives that we don’t really notice the needs of people outside our immediate families. The “gift” is the opportunity to be a blessing to others while we have the time to do it.
If you are lonely and single, take that angel’s advice and fill your unmarried days with a pouring out of yourself to others. Don’t be in such a hurry to find a husband. Trust God. He wants to give you the very best. Relax and wait for His timing. Put the choice in God's hands and you’ll never have to shop for love. It will simply appear one day while you’re out helping others. God's law of attraction will bring the right man to you while you’re busy becoming the right woman.
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