Week 18: Day 2

Intro: Hello and welcome to Orbit, a short reflection to help you put God at the centre of your life from the team behind Satellites - I'm Jenny Flannagan, I manage Alumina, Youthscape’s online support program for teenagers struggling with self-harm. Each weekday we share a little bit of the Bible with you, give you a chance to pray and think about it, and provide you with one practical way to put it into practice today. This week we’re marking National Mental Health Awareness Week with some reflections that focus on this year’s theme, which is loneliness.

Bible: Today's reading comes from Lamentations 2:18-19.

The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. You walls of Daughter Zion, let your tears flow like a river day and night; give yourself no relief, your eyes no rest.

Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint from hunger at every street corner.

Thoughts: Mother Teresa once said that “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” She spent her life caring for those who were completely destitute, whose physical poverty – their lack of money and food and access to medical care – was obvious. But she said loneliness, and the feeling of being unwanted, was worse.

I wonder what experience you have of that pain. I wonder if there are people around you who know how excruciating loneliness is.

These verses in Lamentations really want to kick up a storm about this pain. I don’t know if you noticed but they are really noisy. They talk about people crying, wailing, not sleeping, praying, pleading. Have you ever been to church where you’ve been told to make a huge noise about your pain, or the suffering of others, to wail and cry and yell. I’m going to guess probably not. In most contexts it seems like the world, and maybe even sometimes the church, wants us to be quiet about our pain and not disrupt things. It’s not a very British thing to make a big fuss, is it? We’re supposed to just carry on.

And maybe it’s the same in your family. In some families we just don’t talk about our feelings, or our struggles – that was definitely true in my family growing up. Often we might feel like we don’t want to burden people around us with our pain, we might not feel like anyone wants to listen, it might just not be a thing our family ever does and we don’t even know how, or if we would want to. It can feel so hard to talk about painful things – to even find the words for them.

But these verses tell me that there’s something important about externalising the pain. Not keeping it locked up inside. Not suffering alone. When we keep it all to ourselves we’re stuck with it, trapped with our own suffering.

Amazingly, advances in neuroscience in the last couple of decades back this up. There’s been amazing research that has shown us that finding words for our feelings or our pain starts to bring down the intensity of the feeling. And neuroimaging has shown how connecting with others, talking and processing things that are happening lights up our brains because we are, at our core, relational beings, who need connection more than anything.

Prayer: God, we can read how your people wailed and cried and let their pain be heard and seen. And it is so hard. Give me the courage to find ways to talk about my struggles. And show me how to be a safe person for others to talk to. Amen.

Reflection: Let’s take a few moments to reflect.

Action: Every day on Orbit we give you a simple practical challenge to help you put this passage into action in your life. Here's today's:

Today I want you to look for an opportunity to tell someone about something in your life that is difficult or painful right now. Make sure it’s someone you trust. And I’m not saying you have to spend an hour going into all the details. But have a go, take a step towards letting someone else know, and not keeping it locked away. It might even give them the courage to tell you about something they’re going through as well.

Outro: That's it for today's Orbit. Thanks so much for joining us - we'll be back with another reflection tomorrow.