Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World

by Jennie Allen

we all come into the world looking for someone looking for us.

Scientists now warn that loneliness is worse for our health than obesity, smoking, lack of access to health care, and physical inactivity.

People make up the best parts of life. People make up the most painful parts of life.

Which is ironic, because when Lindsey calls me crying, nothing means more to me. That phone call makes me feel needed, and who doesn’t want someone to need them? So why do I keep pretending that my own need isn’t real?

We hide physically because if we aren’t seen, we can’t be known. And if we can’t be known, we can’t be rejected—or worse, have our vulnerability used to hurt us even further.

Even if a house full of friends isn’t your dream come true, you were built by God for deep relationships.

God has been relational forever.

Woven into the fiber of our souls is a pattern for experiencing intimate relationship with God and then expressing that love in our families and communities and churches.

We look to people to complete and fill what only God was meant to fill. This is the primary reason we all are so unhappy with each other. We have put our hope in imperfect people. But that hope can successfully be answered only in God Himself.

The Bible doesn’t speak to individuals. It’s written for people living out their faith together!

How arrogant are we to think that even though the God of the universe exists in community, our little fragile finite selves can survive without it?

If I expected one or two people to fill all those roles, no one would ever hit the mark.

Also true: if I didn’t appreciate the unique roles my friends play in my life, I might be mad that my “challenger” friend doesn’t encourage me more, or my “wise” friend isn’t fun all the time.

If I start to see that God has put different people in my life to bless me in different ways, then I can both embrace who they are and rest ...

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.

You will disappoint me. I will disappoint you. God will never disappoint us.

because our current world has been built on such rampant independence… it will take deliberate intention to return to the kinds of relationships that God had in mind for us to enjoy. But we can return.

That seems to be the only universally clear marker of the small group of people Jesus chose to spend His time with. They were willing. They were wanting. They were all in.

In the “village” that Zac and I have built, there are two categories of people I spend my time with: People who need me. People I need.

Look for people willing to say hard things and receive hard things.

I should mention here that the apostle Paul wasn’t afraid to caution us against aligning with unhealthy people. Paul talked about people we should avoid, those who live as if “their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame.”[4] In other words, people who are comfortable in their sin, people who mistakenly believe that they don’t need to change—those should not be the ones who make up your inner circle.

We can’t have what we aren’t willing to become.

We must become the people we want in our lives.

Notice Who Is Already Right in Front of You

Initiate and initiate again.

A village of people meeting different needs and loving you in different ways provides a fuller, richer way to live.

No one can be your everything, but everyone has something to say, something to teach you, and something to bring to your life.

Remember, you aren’t the only one craving community. Everyone is craving it. So be the one who makes it happen!

I want you to need me more.

While admittedly painful—excruciating even, depending on the day—the lesson I’m learning right now is that vulnerability is the soil for intimacy, and what waters intimacy is tears.

We must risk pain to have this kind of deep connection in our lives.

The enemy’s strategy is to push us deep into shame and sin and to make us feel so isolated and guilty that we would never admit our struggle aloud. Research tells us that we begin feeling shame between fifteen and eighteen months of age.[1] Meaning, we experience shame before we even have words for it.

Your whole village doesn’t need to know everything. Only those committed to walking with you through your everyday life and deepest struggles qualify here.

What worked for toddlers was going to have to work for me: stumble and fall and stumble and fall and get back up again.

You will only be as close to a friend as you are vulnerable with her.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable,” C. S. Lewis famously wrote.

Complaining is usually centered on others rather than acknowledging our own role in the situation. Vulnerability, in comparison, requires humility and an eagerness to grow. Being truly (and appropriately) vulnerable begins with a heart that desires change, a heart that wants to break the bondage of a negative thought pattern and instead seek and walk in truth.

Complaining seeks relief. Vulnerability seeks transformation and connection.

At its core, accountability calls us to who we were meant to be, through truth mixed with grace.

When we don’t have a village of interconnected, consistent teammates in our lives, we feel invisible, and when we are left alone and unbothered, we become the worst version of ourselves.

Accountability Makes Us More Effective

Look for people who will call you up higher, not those who will let things slide.

Don’t Surround Yourself with Mirrors

Truth in love is the safest place to be, even if it stings a little.

C. S. Lewis said, “Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.”

Friends won’t fall from the sky. Friends are always made.

We carry weighty purpose into every interaction we have, and every human carries in them a weight of glory. When we understand this idea, we love differently. We view our daily work and encounters differently.

Conflict should make friendships, not break them. If we don’t run.

I realized I didn’t need to quit, I didn’t need to spiral in fear, and I didn’t need to self-protect. What I needed was to grow.

And the inconvenience chosen again and again changes us, wakes us up, makes us laugh and love and hope and dream.