Here's a thought to chew on mentally: What may initially appear to be a problem may actually be an opportunity in disguise. It may be an opportunity to grow in some new way—a chance to help someone else as only you, with your unique set of strengths and weaknesses and life experiences, can help.

The next article shows how very common problems, like loneliness and shyness, can be stepping-stones to personal growth and outreach.

Sometimes I yearn for a world without loneliness. What would it be like if we were all self-confident? If we didn't need people to smile at us and notice us? If we were all like perfect, rounded eggs, with a smile decal pasted on our faces?

And as I fantasize, I inevitable come back to a strange conclusion: Thank you, God, for loneliness.

Loneliness is not the sort of feeling that normally makes you thankful. There aren't accurate statistics on it (i.e., 3, 475,212 people in America cried themselves to sleep last night because of loneliness), but it's safe to say that all of us feel lonely a good chunk of the time. Sometimes it goes away—when we're really connecting with friends, when we're loved, when our families are humming together like they're meant to. But always the gnawing feeling returns, eating away at us from the inside, causing us to wonder what is wrong with us since no one wants to be with us. It depresses us and corrodes our self-image.

Why, then, am I thankful for loneliness? Because it's the one thing within me that forces me to reach out to other people.

I think of three friends—Heather, Ralph, and Sharon. In each of their cases, loneliness had spread beyond the common-cold stage; it was a cancer. They needed me. I saw it. Yet in the back of my mind I thought, Aha, I must be a better, more self-sufficient person then they are. I'm not that lonely. I don't need to stoop down and waste my time with people who can't cope.

If only I had been lonelier, I might have been forced to reach out to them. If I had admitted my own loneliness more, I could perhaps have been their cure.

Loneliness is a magnet, just like sex. Because of sex, a married couple is brought together again and again, even when resentments pile up. Even when the hairline has receded and the midriff bulges over the belt and the Glamour figure is a blurred memory—still sex pulls a husband and wife together. It is a magnet.

So it is with loneliness. If we let it, it can be a magnet that pulls us to other people, even when we're laughed at, or excluded from a group, or insulted by sarcasm.

Don't deny your loneliness. Free it, then let it push you toward others. A Christian especially has an advantage because he has experienced Jesus, who promised, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." You can be a cure for others' loneliness. You have a source, a person will always care for you. God loves you as if you were the only one he had to love.

The Gospels ring with stories of Jesus' aloneness. He was misunderstood and not appreciated. Even with his twelve close friends—disciples who followed him wherever he went for three years and listened to everything he said—he was lonely. If you read the accounts of that heart-wrenching, emotional time right before Jesus' death (see Matt. 26:17-56), you can't help sensing Jesus' profound loneliness.

No one else understood what was happening or why. Jesus knew both, and he knew that one of his disciples would turn him over to the soldiers that night. Jesus went out to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, taking his disciples with him, but they were so insensitive that they kept falling asleep. And, one by one, as it became clear their Master would be executed like a common criminal, they deserted him. Jesus faced death entirely alone.

Even Peter, Jesus' most outspoken friend, denied that he knew Jesus and cursed when asked if he was Jesus' disciple.

Jesus was all alone.

But there is a powerful scene in the last chapter of the book of John that shows how Jesus conquered loneliness. The disciples had withdrawn from their dreams of a kingdom and were at their old jobs, fishing in the early morning fog. But Jesus had not withdrawn from them. He went to find them, and when he did he called them over to him and served breakfast on the beach. There, in front of the others, he asked Peter the same piercing question three times: "Peter, do you love me?"

Imagine the pain Peter felt as he was forced to look into the eyes of the friend he had betrayed. And, as Peter answered yes each time, Jesus responded, "Then feed my sheep."

Peter got the message. He was to quit feeling sorry for himself and get on with the task of reaching out to others. He did so and became one of the most effective Christians in history.

Peter's example shows that the solution to our longing is not a world without lonely people, but a world of people who use their loneliness to reach out to others. There are two aspects. First, we must link up to God, who loves us and accepts us regardless of our failings. Every time we fail Jesus, he still stands there and asks, "Do you love me? If so, get on with the work of loving other people."

The second part of the solution to loneliness is the response of reaching out to others. God created us incomplete, not as a cruel trick to edge us toward self-pity but as an opportunity to edge us toward others with similar needs.

Jesus summarized his advice about relationships in one statement: "Do to others what you would have them do to you" (Matt. 7:12). Applied to the problem of loneliness, that could be restated: "Assume everyone else in the world is at least as lonely as you, then act toward them as you'd want them to act toward you."

The quality I've regarded negatively is ________________.

Here's how it turned out for good:
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Classifying the Negatives

Things I Don't Like About Myself and Plan to Change:
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Things I Don't Like About Myself That Can Be Used for Good:
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Things I Don't Like, Can't Change, and Must Simply Accept:
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These excerpts are from The Campus Life Guide to Knowing and Liking Yourself: Personal Best. This book is currently out of print, but check out these resources for teens.

Copyright © 1991 by Campus Life Books, a division of Christianity Today, Inc. All rights reserved. Excerpted from The Campus Life Guide to Knowing and Liking Yourself: Personal Best, pages 37-41, by Diane Eble. Used by permission. For reprint information call 630-260-6200.