Do you know the difference between being alone and being lonely? They are actually quite different from each other. When your alone, it simply means that you are by yourself. As many introverts know (myself included) being alone does not always mean you are lonely. Many times I like to hang out in my room, in the peace and quiet, perhaps listening to music or a show, free to be myself without having to worry about what others think. Being lonely, however, is much more complicated. If I’m alone in my room long enough, I get lonely. But, as a matter of fact, the main time I’m lonely is when I’m with others. I look at the other girls around me; beautiful, confident, cheerful, and best friends— just not with me. They stand in a circle, talking and chatting and laughing, while I stand outside the circle looking in. Wishing I was like them. Wishing they liked me!
As humans, we find ourselves in this situation far to often. As teenagers, we find ourselves in this situation almost all the time. Whether you’re scrolling through social media, seeing the amazing post that one popular girl made, or simply at school, wishing you had as many friends as that one guy. We feel we need to and we try to keep up with them: we do our makeup, paint our nails, buy the prettiest clothes we can find and make our hair the prettiest it can be. We try and act confident and maybe even copy that one girl to make ourselves seem more attractive. We never realize, it never crosses our minds, that perhaps that girl looks that way because SHE is doing the makeup, buying the clothes, doing her hair and trying to act like the beautiful and perfect girl everybody thinks she is. Who knows, maybe she is even copying you! Then, this cycle repeats itself, everybody is trying to act like the person the girl next to them is trying to act like, and in the end we are all miserable. Trying to be the person everybody thinks everybody else is, hiding our pain and flaws deep within ourselves where nobody could ever see it. Worse, the friends you end up getting for acting this way are never truly your friend because they aren’t friends with you, just the person you pretend to be. In the end, we are all just lonely— lonely together.
       But we don’t have to be. God made each one of us beautiful as we are, even our flaws are made for a reason. If every piece of a puzzle was the same, it would just be a mess. Hard as it is (I’m afraid I struggle with it the most) we need to stop hiding who we are and show our weaknesses, (“my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” 2 Corinthians 12) because doing so will allow other to do the same. We were made to hold each other up, not pull each other down. People need friends to help them with their struggles, they don’t need to get rid of their struggles to get friends! If that were true, nobody would have a friend.
     Furthermore, even if nobody wanted to be your friends because of a flaw, that wouldn’t matter! Jesus loves you no matter what, no matter what you have done/will do. He didn’t die for only when you were perfect, he died for you when you were a sinner! (“But God proves his love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” -Romans 5:8) If we were perfect, we would have no need for him. In fact, with that in mind, I’m glad I’m a sinner. I’m glad I have flaws and have made mistakes, because those are the things that make me dependent on God, for there is no one else I can trust more than him. After all, “for I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor heights more depths, nor any powers. Nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our lord” -Romans 8: 38-39. Therefore, instead of our weaknesses separating us from one, they have instead made us need and get a friend that nothing in the entire world can separate us from, and that will never let us down. Therefore, we never again need to feel lonely, for we will never again be alone.