Stay With Me

A collection of thoughts about Leaders, Loneliness and Leprosy. 

Loneliness,

one of the most misunderstood emotions in the human experience. Some say that being alone and feeling lonely are the same but aside from the similar verbiage they are quite different. Being alone means you have a lack of human contact while loneliness means you have a lack of human connection. I have lived most of my life surrounded by people, but I still sometimes feel this loneliness. If I were to explain it, it would have to be something like living in loud silence and chronic overstimulation. 

I was inspired to write about loneliness because my graduation is 2 days away and I am watching all of my fellow seniors (while ready to leave) experience both fear of the future and this kind of loneliness, maybe for the first time. For me, it has been especially hard, not because I despise the feeling of loneliness after bittersweet goodbyes, but because for the first time in my life I am going to really be alone. While I watch my friends find roommates and buy dorm decor I say goodbye to not only my old life but the people I’ve counted on for years. For the first time, while I await the meeting of my new community of racers, I am alone. 

Among other things, Jesus was compassionate, kind, forgiving, and loving. He was perfect, but Jesus was also lonely. This was because Jesus was a leader and leaders are often lonely. No one understood Him- even those close to Him tried talking Him out of going to the cross. Yet He chose to be fruitful over being famous, which makes someone very lonely. When Jesus had just eaten His last meal and preached His last sermon before He was to be crucified, He took James, Peter, and John with Him. He did not ask them for any preachings or favors, He simply asked them to stay with Him. How beautiful that our Savior knows what it is like to feel loneliness in a way many of us will not ever have the opportunity to experience. 

“I am so sad that I feel as if I am dying. Stay here and keep awake with me.” -Matthew 14 

Part of growing is the realization that you may be loved by many yet liked by few. I often wonder how many people would watch Jesus preach and they would be so in love with Him and His words. But how many of them liked him, knew his favorite color, or knew his unique traits only people close would know? This form of loneliness is something specific to those who live outside of the crowd. The crowd has each other, they are surrounded, suffocated with others just like them. But a leader is followed. Thus the phenomenon that leaders and loneliness go hand in hand is born. 

One of the misconceptions about loneliness is that it is always a bad thing. In reality, loneliness can be a gift. I might even go as far as saying they you sometimes have to choose loneliness to change the world. What exactly is this kind of loneliness? It is the product of being 100% yourself. When you are true to yourself, you will be lonely because everyone else wants you to be like them. Ironically, I have found that embracing this loneliness can make you feel less alone. You have to choose it, and you have to not care that others aren’t making that same choice. Not caring about being alone is what makes others want to follow you, it is just part of being a leader. 

If you place your identity in Christ and you live for Him, then you finally begin to lead for Him. Even this kind of leadership depends on at least some form of loneliness, because one has to get away from the noise to decipher what is being said in order to proclaim it to others. This can be seen in many places in the bible, Moses went to the wilderness, he also spent 40 days on a mountain with God, Paul went to the desert, Elijah spent 40 days isolated on Mount Horeb, John got banished from Rome to an Island where he wrote Revelation, Jeremiah lived a spouse-less and family-less life, and Jesus went to the desert to hear from his father. Jesus was always being sought after by the crowd, but he made a priority of stepping away to reflect and pray alone. 

Then there is the type of isolation that one does not choose, but one can still embrace. The woman who bled for 12 years straight was untouched until Jesus healed her. We have to accept some seasons of isolation to seek God’s help. Take the man with leprosy in Matthew 8 who was living a life defined by social isolation. Untouched by anyone, starved of both human contact, connection, and even interaction. How incredible that after being stripped of touch, the first person he felt on his skin was the son of God. There is glory in being alone, it helps us understand redemption. When you embrace your loneliness and feel Jesus’s touch, the unclean does not make the clean unclean the clean make the unclean clean.

This is not to say that the constant lack of any community is biblical or healthy, we know that God gave Adam and Eve to each other for a reason. But there is something special about the connection leaders have with loneliness that can give God glory and the ability to change the world.

After all, a conductor cannot lead the orchestra unless his back is facing the crowd.