Loneliness and belonging shape every human heart. Everybody, no matter the language, culture, or era, understands the kind of emptiness that echoes in an invisible place inside when they feel disconnected. Loneliness is a deeply shared and yet oddly individual experience. Sometimes it’s as fleeting as a song I hear on a random Spotify playlist, and other times it’s a stubborn presence that won’t leave no matter where I go. I have felt loneliness as a passing ache for someone who used to be closer, or as a wave that rolls in as soon as I drive to a certain spot. In some seasons of life it has felt like a hopeless sadness constantly whispering that “I don’t have any real friends” or “No one really knows me.” Today I felt a little stab of it as I drove home after a run. A sudden sense of loneliness came over me at the thought of my firstborn leaving for college in a few months. Even when he’s standing in front of me, I miss him already. Loneliness can take on all these different forms because we are com-plex, designed souls that influence one another’s thriving. For wider context on how this shows up across the country, see loneliness demographics in America.
We don’t need just physical health but also specific kinds of relationships for flourishing life as a human soul. Because we are one whole being created with connection from the inside out, our internal experience of loneliness is deeply connected to the design of our relationships. For practical guidance for loneliness care, there are concrete ways communities can respond that honor the complexity of what people are feeling.
We need a wake-up call to remember how God designed true, rich human connection— and return to a pursuit of what is good for human souls. I have often been mistaken in what would bring me the fulfillment I long for. I have pushed away relationships for the sake of work. I have in-vested in the wrong relationships for the wrong reasons. I have taken too much or too little from others. I have avoided some relationships altogether because reconciliation is difficult. I’ve spent too much time worried about people who exist inside my devices but will never stand in front of me. I have suffered the outcome of all that in various kinds of loneliness because I never knew that God left me a blueprint for the life of my soul. Along the way, reminders for dealing with loneliness and even reflections on loneliness in ministry leadership have helped me see patterns I couldn’t name before.
I found it in the relationships of Jesus.
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Jesus had five critical types of relationships. The way he attended to them was out of an overflow from his center of connection to God, which allowed him to form, prioritize, and love all his human relationships in just the right way. (Something I can never manage to do.) Jesus’s life was more beautiful, more intentional, and much less lonely than our lives feel.
In each of his five realms of relationship, God provided for his needs to grow in wisdom, be attached and included, experience feeling truly known, and engage in the adventure and unscripted moments of human life. Jesus lived these just as we need to.
Each of the five types of relationships included certain types of people who made his life rich and fruitful and authentically human. Each of the five types also had identifiable characteristics: specific natures of interaction, certain activities, and notable boundaries around time, intimacy, activity, or conversation. We desperately need this wisdom because Jesus lived fulfilled in a way that most of us do not.
Excerpt taken from A Blueprint for Belonging: Building a Positive School Culture From the Ground Up. Published by Solution Tree ©2024. Used by permission.
