TeenConnect: Q&A July 3, 2017 Issue

You can pray about loneliness

By Jenny Sawyer with Curt Wahlberg

Feeling lonely? You’re not alone. Though we’re more connected than ever (thanks, social media), many of us still feel isolated. Is there a spiritual solution to loneliness? TeenConnect’s editor, Jenny Sawyer, asked Christian Science practitioner and teacher Curt Wahlberg.

The world certainly provides lots of people to be around and opportunities to connect. But for me, actually solving this problem of loneliness comes down to a deeper issue: satisfaction. What makes us feel complete? And to answer that question, we need to look at identity—what we are beyond our personality, and our likes and dislikes. I’ve found that to deal effectively with loneliness, I need to get a spiritual sense of my identity.

For so many of us, there’s a strong feeling that to be satisfied, we need something outside ourselves to make us feel complete and worthy. If we just find this kind of friend, or this kind of relationship, then we’ll be OK. So to pray about loneliness, first we’ve got to resist the pull to look for answers “out there,” which unfortunately is a temporary solution at best.

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