Anonymous asked:

I need help. I feel alone, helpless, hopeless, unwanted (and that’s what hurts the most I guess). I’m away at college and it’s my freshman year and everyone I love feels so far away? I thought that I’d be able to take this ‘fast’ from people, but it’s so hard. I hate myself for not being better able to adjust, for not making friends quickly, for not being happy. I feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore. God always seems so far away, even if I do pray and read the bible. Please please help.

Hey: I’m really sorry and I know how crippling it is to be lonely.  As much as you don’t want to hear it now, please hear me say that you’re totally loved and you’re very much not alone. 

Most of us who feel lonely and unwanted get tricked by our flesh into an imprisoning cycle: we think being unwanted means we “deserve” to be unwanted, or that loneliness somehow means we are bad people.  We think of it like a permanent virus, but that is NOT true. Those emotions are very real, but they’re more like a fog that you need to keep walking through to the other side where there’s sun.

Being a freshman anywhere (school, job, church, marriage) can be a weird limbo-ish place of growing pains, so please know that it will NOT always be like this.  There’s always an “initial phase” of frustration to new journeys that take a little time, and for some it takes longer than others.  Don’t ever feel bad about your own pacing: everyone blooms differently.  No more guilt about that, all right?  Be comfortable with your own rate of growth.

You’re also at an exciting juncture where tons of opportunities are waiting for you, and if you haven’t yet, please check out the local campus ministries and some younger churches near you.  There are always student ministries that are ready to embrace you, and while no church is perfect nor a final solution to every issue, it’ll be a start to grow into a new community.

Continue reading “Question: Lonely, Hopeless, Unwanted” →