Loneliness in Three Stages

The following testimony appeared in the newsletter of Nashville’s Crisis Pregnancy Support Center: “I got pregnant when I was sixteen, and the only thing lonelier than being sixteen and pregnant is knowing you have to make an adoption plan for your baby. “Loneliness gradually became a part of my life as my pregnancy progressed. In the beginning my friends still dropped by and sometimes I would still go out with them. Before long, however, my pregnancy became obvious, and I was always tired.

They still wanted me to do things with them, but most of the time I just didn’t feel like it. I began to amuse myself by reading, watching Tv, and thinking about the baby that was to come. This was the first stage of my loneliness when I learned to do everything alone.

“When watching TV and reading got old, I spent a lot of time crying in my room. I was alone and confused, and I knew I couldn’t keep my baby. As I decided on adoption, I thought my heart would break. The decision was made out of love for my baby, but it was the hardest decision I will ever make in my whole life.

This was the second stage of my loneliness when I cried alone. “The third stage of my loneliness was the shortest because this is where the Lord found me.

My mother told me to trust in the Lord and He would give me the strength to do what I had to do. I began to spend a lot of time praying, and I found that I was no longer alone. I had a friend who was always there to listen. That friend was Jesus Christ, and He was the cure for all my loneliness.”• 1 “Lonely,” in Crisis Pregnancy Support Center, Nashville, Tennessee Newsletter, Summer 1990.

2Erwin W. Lutzer, “Deserving of Tears,” Moody, February 1984, 127. 3 Erwin W. Lutzer, “Deserving of Tears,” Moody, February 1984, 128.

4 Andrew W. Blackwood, The Fine Art of Public Worship (Nashville: Abingdon, 1939), 204.