The power of one

Loneliness is often one of the most difficult things we can ever face in life. For me, I went through some years where I felt so lonely that ALL I wanted was just friends. The pain was horrible and I even was on the verge of suicide.

After I came to church, I wanted a group of friends whom I could be really close to. Although I grew close to my church friends, I never found a group that I could be really close to. As I struggled through my friendship problems to the point of nearing leaving church, God showed me something completely new and unexpected. While almost everyone else in church has their own group that they "belong" to (mostly through being in the same batch), I'm in a different situation, to fulfill a completely different purpose. (Which means, I'm still going to have no group for some time...)

Through being independent of a group and having grown in dependence on God for quite long, I've discovered the hidden strengths of being alone. Being alone, there are incredible things I'm achieving that I would never have achieved if I was too attached to my own group of close friends. Even up to now, the things I can do alone still surprise me at times.

One important thing I've been doing is to mix around with and talk to those who don't have friends whom they are close to in church. Some of these friends are "lost" in church, having left the youth, while others have left church already. They don't look for people to talk to, while others usually stick to their own groups, so if I can talk to them and help them feel comfortable talking to me, why not? Some of them now take the initiative to come and talk to me when they see me around.

I've also been mixing around with various groups in church, going out with some, playing LAN with some others, playing sports with others. Over time, I've come to realise that by not sticking to any group, I've unknowingly formed a HUGE social circle around me. Wow. Considering how long I've been in church, I have mixed with a REALLY wide variety of people.

I've gone through a lot to get to where I am now. It's hasn't been easy, but God has been there for me, and through all these, He's moulding me. God has made me to be alone, so that others would not be alone. By being ready to stand alone and letting Him work through me, I have achieved so many amazing things that no one else could, and I know, there's still so much more in store for me, so much more I've yet to achieve.

Looking at ourselves...through whose eyes?

Sometimes, the one person we dislike most in our lives is ourselves. We feel that we don't look good enough, we're not intelligent enough, we're not popular enough... We never seem to meet up to our own expectations, do we?

For someone who has felt rejected by people for years, I've come to realise that the years of rejection have had a larger impact on me than I realised. After I became a Christian, it seemed like the pain and suffering of the past was over. Or so I thought. Besides the loneliness that took a lot of difficulty to overcome, one other thing that has lasted is a rather low self-esteem.

As a Christian, one thing I've learned is that we should base our esteem on what God thinks of us and not what man (including our own selves) think of us. Yet, we often judge ourselves so easily and feel so bad about ourselves that sometimes we even wish we were someone else. I admit I won't be surprised if I'm more judgemental of myself than my friends are of me.

It's a struggle I've yet to win, but slowly, as I continue to grow spiritually, I know I can accomplish this.

Solo lunches

Have you ever gone through a period during which you had lunch by yourself most of the time. Last year, around this period, I went for solo lunches for several (say 10+?) weeks. At the start, it felt more like a torture than anything, but over time, I gained some interesting "rewards".

This was the period after my spiritual moments from the May Prayer Meeting 2005 to Church Camp 2005. Partly as a testing of my faith and partly learning to overcome my loneliness, I decided to have these solo lunches. What I did was that after 2nd service ended, I would spend some time chatting with the rest, then after a while I would just walk off on my own to have lunch. I was sort of trusting God to provide me with people to eat with, or I could just have lunch on my own remembering that God is with me.

At the start, having to eat alone when almost everyone else in church was eating with friends didn't feel good. Most times, I would walk around and see where the rest are (often in their usual groups) before I decide where to eat alone. It felt quite stupid at times and sometimes I did feel like I was torturing myself by doing this. However, over time, I gained emotional strength, and eventually eating alone didn't matter at all.

Yet, during this period, I didn't eat alone every week. There were some times when God provided people for me to eat with, which was quite encouraging for me. I remember a number of times when I had settled down and was eating by myself, a group of church people would walk by outside the restaurant, look in and be surprised to see me eating by myself (often much to my surprise too in unexpectedly seeing them). A few times, this also allowed me to eat with groups that I had never eaten with before (and it's quite unlikely I'll ever get to eat with these same groups), which is probably one of the unexpected rewards I gained from those few weeks.

It was an enriching experience for me, and I admit that by putting myself through this, I gained more than I had asked for. Maybe I will try this again sometime...