Now I know that you might be thinking, Trevor if you are so about community are you against being alone? The answer to that question is no. Matter of fact, I actually enjoy being alone. Every personality test that I have ever taken through high school, college, and into my adult life has split me right down the middle between an introvert and extrovert. I have found that I am able to turn on my excited hang out with people's version of myself, but every time there is a fallout. I need a few hours and sometimes even a whole day to reset.
I love to be with people and to share my life in my community there is no doubting that, but just as much as I like to do those things I also like to sit alone by myself and write, or read, or even watch endless Youtube videos about live music looping from Dovydas or drains being cleared out, we’ve all been down that late night Youtube video rabbit hole.
I don’t want you to walk away from reading this expecting you have to change everything about your life, thinking that you need to completely stop your alone time. I actually hope it's the opposite, I do hope that you find a good community that you can invest in and be invested in, but I also hope that you understand the value of being alone.
When I say alone I don’t mean being alone in a room scrolling through instagram wishing your life would be different than it is, no, what I mean is doing things that are productive or things that you find rest in. For me, writing is a great way for me not only to be productive, but to find rest. Currently as I write these words I am sitting alone in my office while my two month old son naps next to me, I have a Hans Zimmer playlist going and every so often I check my phone to see what my wife or student group chat has to say.
I have also found moments where I totally disconnect, moments like after camp a few weeks ago. After five crazy days of 280+ students and 50+ adults always asking where you are and what is going to happen next I needed to completely unplug from humanity. I came home from camp Friday evening and helped my wife unpack and start the laundry, we made a small dinner and headed up to our room where we ate in our bedroom quietly watching some netflix show.
The next day is when I found solace. I woke up to the sound of my son trying to make up words, both my dogs were very interested in what he had to say. After getting up and changing his wet diaper I got back into bed and gave him a bottle, we sat in silence together and just listened to the morning come to life. For the most part of that day I sat in silence, while my wife was able to go to the gym and workout, and even when she was home she spent the majority of the time cleaning up the mess our dogs made while we were away. I have nothing wrong with being alone, so don’t misunderstand when I say, even in our moments by ourselves we still need community.
What does that mean “Even in our moments by ourselves we still need community”? I think it is actually quite simple, at least once you have a community in place. Like I said, being alone is an important party of humanity even for an extrovert, but the reality is we cannot stay there. In our current culture we have found ways to continue to disconnect ourselves while believing we are connected, let me give you some examples of what I mean.
Texting, most of us don’t go a day without texting our family, friends, or loved ones, but how many times do we replace texting with real communication. Now I know that some of the students I work with might read this and try to defend how important texting is to them, how they are able to be more transparent over texting than in person. I believe that is wrong and that it should be the exact opposite.
We can so easily seclude ourselves and believe the lie that we are connected to people in the community, when the reality is we are only digitally connected. It is important that we understand the value of true face to face connection, because we can become cold and lack empathy when we remove the human connection side of community.
Social Media, we love our social media right? I mean most of us have checked Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter today right? I know I have, but how many times do we justify that we have connected with people because we liked their photos or status? Don’t get me wrong, I know how awesome social media can be.
For years I grew up thousands of miles away from my extended family. We moved to Arizona when I was 11 years old, all while the majority of my family lived in Colorado or Iowa. It would be years that I would go without seeing my many cousins or amazing grandparents, and it was hard. I wasn’t able to connect with my extended family like so many of my friends could. Because of social media, over the past five years I have been able to be closer to each of my family members who now live all across the united states.
Social media can be used for good, but my perception of how the majority of us use it, I see as negative. We use it to connect with friends and family, but so many of us myself included waste hours of our day pointlessly looking and comparing our lives to those on the other side of the screen. The reality of those posts though is that it is the best part of their life. I know we all know one or two crazies who post everything and some on their social media, but the majority of humans only post the best of the best. We can get so caught up in the comparison that it becomes detrimental to our community.
I believe that we can use social media to our benefit, but we must be wise and understand our limits before it begins to deconstruct the fragile bond within our community. We must be willing to be alone and not try to be connected every moment of the day. When we are able to pull ourselves away from the constant barrage of life both on and off line, we can begin to truly find rest and peace in the things that we are going through, and we can connect deeper with our community.
I encourage you then, what does it look like to be alone, not that we rip away community or loved ones. But to focus for a moment on the world around us and what God might be trying to tell us. This reminds me of prayer life, for so many of us Prayer was something that we learned to do simply by our parents before a meal or bed, or prayer was something we watched while the pastor did it from stage.
There is so much good that can come from communal prayer, intercession, agreement of the community and petition to Christ as one. We’ve seen it, as a church gathers around someone who was diagnosed with cancer, or the young person shipping off to boot camp, or the missionary who visited their church. Communities coming together to pray are powerful.
But how is your prayer life at home? How is it alone in your room or kitchen? Are we treating prayer time alone like a holy vending machine, typing in the numbers after “paying our dues,” or are we investing our time and life into having a conversation with Jesus?
I, like so many of you, have struggled with prayer. In fact, though I feel like I have gotten better at it recently, I still tend to struggle. There are some simple tricks that I think can help improve your prayer life, so that when we spend time alone it can be a good investment of our time and life.
Here are a few tips on how to create a more consistent prayer life that my friend Alicia helped create.
Actions Steps to create consistent prayer life:
1) Pray for the ability to make prayer a more consistent thing in your life
2) Set a time in your calendar for it each day - it doesn't have to be for hours, just start with 5-15 minutes.
3) Habit stack - what is something else you do regularly that you can then stack prayer on to as well?
Here are some examples.
Brushing your teeth in the morning? Pray after you finish.
Driving to or from work? Pray during your drive rather than listen to the radio.
Working out? Set a time to pray after you get finished
4) Use other prayers as a starting point
An example might be, The Book of Common Prayer (buy a physical copy or go to bookofcommonprayer.net)
The Lord's Prayer
Psalms - many prayers in there
Something to remember:
Silence is normal
It may feel boring at times
Distractions will happen - have a pen and paper to write them down - then refocus
This isn’t something to master but a time for us to be formed
Trust that God is always there.
I encourage you all to make a conscious effort to spend some time alone. Yes, I do want you to be in community and to have community, but it is impossible unless you live in a commune to spend every waking moment in a community. So take those moments when you are alone and create space to hear God, to speak your heart to Him and listen for answers.
I really like the last point that Alicia made in her steps to creating a better prayer life. Silence is normal. I’ve struggled with that, so often I want to have music playing in the background, or the quiet lull of some show or movie, I don’t even watch it sometimes I just want it on. How can we hear Christ if we continue to fill the void of silence with noise?
So though this challenge of being alone and quiet might be hard, I do believe that it will help you become better. As you become better and spend the moments alone you have in intercession, prayer, and silence listening for Christ your community will feel the impact of your growth. You will become a better member of your community who truly cares about those within it, and you will have a mindset that is able to stop and listen to what others might be staying.
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