FamilyLife Today®

Ann Wilson: Tell me a time when you felt really lonely.

Dave Wilson: Going through succession after 30 years of leading a church. That felt lonely. That felt like I was walking down a tunnel alone. It was dark. You and my family were with me, and I was alone.

Ann Wilson: Where were your friends?

Dave Wilson: It was interesting. It didn't feel like they were there. My closest friends, the couples that we do life with and have done for 30-plus years, they were with me. Everybody else was on the outside not understanding how hard it was.

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

I’ve always said the greatest gift in my life, behind Jesus and you, is the couples we've done life with for 30 years. We raised our kids together. I think I did all their kids' weddings and officiated. It was hard work, but it's the best gift we’ve ever had. We’re talking about that today, about finding your people. We sit here going, "Wow, we found our people."

Ann Wilson: But Dave, so many people haven't, and they're lonely. Sometimes you don't even know you're lonely until you hit something where you've gone through something that you feel devastated and you don't even know how to get out, and you don't have people.

Dave Wilson: Jennie Allen is back again at FamilyLife Today to talk about finding your people. Jennie, welcome back. You’re smiling because you found your people and you wrote a book that says this is how God made us. We have to find our people. We’ve talked for a couple days now; it's really hard.

Ann Wilson: Let me ask you, Jennie. You're an author, you're a speaker, you're a mom, you're a wife. What has been the loneliest time for you?

Jennie Allen: Moving to Dallas was a moment. We moved our whole family. We had a senior in high school at the time, which there were a lot of reasons for this move and it was hard, but he was on board. We had a sophomore in high school and then we had a middle schooler and an elementary school-age kid.

That whole first year really revolved around getting them set up and settled. I was meeting people, but you don't feel known. It was just starting over, and it was scary and hard. We had to do all the awkward things you have to do to make friends.

Ann Wilson: I feel like as I talk to women, there are two phases that can be really difficult. One is when you have young children, and whether you're working and then you come home and you're just pouring into your kids, or maybe you're a stay-at-home mom and your friends are working.

Dave Wilson: And you're complaining because your husband's not helping enough.

Ann Wilson: Exactly, and your marriage is struggling because that's a really hard time of your life. Another hard stage that I'm talking to women my age is empty nesters.

Whereas before their kids were in school, so they had all these people, their friends, parents, sports events, all these different things they're meeting people. Now they're not meeting as many people, or they've moved into a new community and they don't know any people. Let's hit those two things a little bit.

Jennie Allen: One thing I talk about in the book a lot is that the idea of a village should be more than your two to five best friends. It should actually be a whole group of people that are helping you live life and raise kids and do all these seasons together.

That village, they're not going to be your daily friends, but they're going to be in and out of your life as Sunday school teachers, as friends that your kids play sports with, and neighbors. It's all of these people that are just in our life anyway and might be different ages and life stages and all of that, but provide hopefully what village living has provided for people for generations, which is help.

I think we all need it. To the mom that feels really isolated, I would say, first of all, make friends with people that don't have kids. Singles were some of my best friends in that time. They would come over after I'd put my kids down and my husband was gone, and we'd get to hang out. They were flexible enough to be able to drop by when my kids were napping or when they were asleep.

Then I would say make friends with people that are older than you that will come over and give you perspective that this season is not the end-all-be-all. Here’s what's going to happen, and here’s how I handled this, and here’s what I did. Those people are necessary in your life. We call them mentors or disciple makers sometimes, but whatever you call them, you just need people that have done this life stage before you.

Then I would say get creative with your friends. One thing I did with my friends when we had young kids was every Sunday we would cook for each other and we would take and deliver meals and see each other when we would deliver our meals to each other.

Ann Wilson: That’s so sweet. So you did that every Sunday?

Jennie Allen: Yeah, we would cook together. Another thing I've seen people do is meet at Costco, meet at Target, meet somewhere there's a playground, go to a park together, push your strollers.

I also want to say for those people that are just starting their life, do not be like Monica and Chandler on *Friends* where they have their twins and they move out to the suburbs. If you are having babies and you're thinking we need a yard, we need all these things, we need the perfect house, be sure you're not leaving the communal system that you actually need to raise your kids.

I would say be careful to take a job that pays more and leave your family. Be careful in that season to make choices that maybe bring you conveniences but take you away from people. Certainly not everyone's going to go move because they read this book, but I do hope it brings into context that I need neighbors and I need people that know what's going on and that I can borrow things from and take walks with and be in each other's life.

Ann Wilson: Which is so contrary because many times we make that move because of money. We have a better job, status, climbing the ladder. Of course we're going to do it.

Dave Wilson: I have literally sat with men who asked for my advice on a job change, often a city change, and this what you just said, Jennie, is way down on the priority list. They think it's not that important.

Jennie Allen: The number one priority of your life should be the relationships in your life. There's nothing else that lasts forever. It's God and His people. This is going to go into eternity with us. There's not a better investment of your life, and you need it to live. We are just so arrogant in America that we think we can live without connection.

Dave Wilson: But Jennie, the job being offered is double the salary.

Jennie Allen: Keep half the salary and live in a neighborhood with five friends that have less means than you, and that's the neighborhood they can afford. Make choices around this. This should be the guiding force of our life because it's the richest part of life, it's the most meaningful part of life, and it's the most essential part of life.

Dave Wilson: So you’ve got that community? You’re never leaving?

Jennie Allen: People are going to have to move. I hear a lot from military families, and I just had to redo it in Dallas. Our move was to move closer to family. I did do it, but certainly we left a lot of good friends and had to start over. But you can build it anywhere you go.

I think it should be at the top of the list of the choices we're making and why we're making them. Sure, take the better job, but you better get busy right when you get there and find accountability. You can do all the things that I say to do in the book, but you've just got to do it faster than other people because you're going to be off to the next place.

Then you've got to pick the friends that you keep with you. I have a great group of friends in approximate proximity to me. They are the ones that pull me out of bed when I'm really down and they know I need to go out, and they will come over and say, "Get dressed and let's go." So I have those friends that can get in my face and are my day-to-day friends.

But that other group serves a purpose too, and they are deep, rich friends too. None of them live—well, one of them lives in Dallas, but most of them don't. And so we're doing and practicing depth long distance. You can do that, praise God, now through technology. That's not enough. You also need someone that's in your day-to-day business and your life.

Dave Wilson: One of our best friends that lived two blocks from us, they literally lived about 20 miles away. They moved to be near us and we raised our kids together.

Ann Wilson: Which I thought that was amazing that they did that.

Jennie Allen: That’s very radical. Everybody listening is like, "That's crazy."

Ann Wilson: It was crazy and it was amazing. My friend and I, we walked probably four days a week. This is a good thing too; we ended up praying and fasting one day a week for each other's kids. We became sisters.

Dave Wilson: And he was my brother. We've known each other decades. About five or six years ago, we get a text to our guys' group, "Hey, anybody want our snow blower?" I was like, "Why?" "We're moving." I'm like, "What do you mean you're moving? You tell us by asking if we want your snow blower?" We all went crazy. "What do you mean you're moving?"

Ann Wilson: We were so mad, so hurt.

Dave Wilson: And they did. They moved to be near their daughters, which is awesome, and they wanted to be there with their grandkids.

Ann Wilson: And we kind of had it out a little bit because they also said, "You guys, you're gone all the time now. You are constantly on the road doing marriage stuff." So we get it.

Dave Wilson: But they're listening right now, Rob and Michelle, and they're like, "It was so hard because it's everything you're saying; they were our people."

Jennie Allen: God’s got to be the center of your relational activity or you're going to be a real drain on your friends. That is very important, and it's an important thing not to miss that principle because ultimately, people will die, people will move. Our hope is not ultimately in people.

Ann Wilson: They do not meet all of our needs.

Jennie Allen: No, and they will certainly be transient. I'm just suggesting what you all just said, which is that was a radical thing. That shouldn't be radical. We should make choices like that all the time, and the church should be making choices like that all the time, that we choose to be near family, we choose to be near good friends, we make that a priority in our lives.

Will you be able to hang on to them forever? No. And will there be a sense of they won't ever meet all your needs? Absolutely. And that's why it's so precious about having godly friendships where you're all going, "My needs are getting met with God, and I, out of obedience, want this to be part of my life in following Him." And so we're going to do that together, but we're not asking each other to be each other's end-all-be-all because we have a God that is the best of friend. Jesus is the best of friend. And so we get to walk with Him and have a relationship with Him and then that bleed into our relationships.

Dave Wilson: And at the same time, even though they're in Atlanta now, we just have to work harder. It isn't like we're done. It's like you've got to come back and see us, we're going to go see you. It's going to be work. It’s a Zoom. It's harder work. They're not a couple blocks away, but you still have to do it because your people are your people.

Ann Wilson: What I've realized with Michelle being gone is she's my therapy person. You're talking, you're sharing, you're doing life with somebody, and you're working out things as you're talking. I realize I'm not doing that as much anymore with someone, and I need that because it helps me when I can say, "Dave is really bugging me right now."

Jennie Allen: It's why proximity is the first thing. Now, you don't have to have it, but man, didn't that make a special friendship because you were walking four times a week? So everybody listening that feels lonely, look at your neighbors. Maybe you have them, but maybe you don't, and maybe you do need to make a shift.

I know that sounds radical and crazy, but people move for crazier reasons. This is a priority. I think finding those people that it's easy to see in the years that your kids are young matters. I told my daughter the other day, they're talking about setting up their life and what's that going to look like, and I said, "Listen, pick a street. If y'all are going to be the first ones to have kids and then basically you make friends with all your neighbors and just start getting everybody's phone numbers, because be the person that creates it."

Maybe that's your street, maybe you stay exactly where you are, but you start getting people's phone numbers and saying, "Hey, if you ever move, talk to me first and sell it to a friend." There's ways you can do this without moving, but I do think proximity does matter.

Ann Wilson: As a mom, have you ever lost your temper and thought, "Wow, how did that escalate so fast?" Because mom anger usually isn't just about the spilled milk or sibling arguments. That gets you angry, but there's often something deeper going on.

Dave Wilson: We have been there. And guess what? We've got a five-session video series from author and mom of four, Janel Breitenstein. Let me tell you, she gets real. She gets real about her life and her anger and her own struggles with anger and what God has taught her through them. Let me tell you, you're going to discover practical tools, biblical encouragement, and you'll get insight into the fears and triggers fueling your reaction.

Ann Wilson: It's so good. So you can sign up today at familylife.com/momanger. Again, that's familylife.com/momanger.

Dave Wilson: We interviewed a pastor from Missouri, Don Everts, and he talked about chronic loneliness. He had an interesting perspective. I want to know what you think of what Don had to say.

Don Everts: In our research, it came out that a quarter of people in the United States live alone. A number of people say that no one comes over to their house ever. So in the medical field, they talk about there's a chronic loneliness is sweeping the country.

The interesting thing is in the medical literature, they prefer to call it depression. But the doctors are like, "It's chronic loneliness. You have no one in your life, and humans aren't meant to live that way." So just to knock on someone's door, just to say hi, in our current context, it does not take much to be heroic.

Jennie Allen: Wow, yes. I'm so glad for people like Don that are doing that research. I interviewed a guy that probably has a similar focus on loneliness right now. It was absolutely depressing because this is the disease of our day, but we're not able to really quantify it or talk about it because we haven't made it an acceptable thing to struggle with.

I think people feel a lot of shame. If you say depression, that's kind of something you can't control, but loneliness feels like something you could. And so there's a lot of shame around it. But also, praise God, it's something that we can change. It's something that I believe right now my job is to trumpet this in the church and say, "Hey, I don't think we've been doing this as well as we could, and I think we could do it better."

Then they start to go, "You know what, I'm going to live differently. I'm going to start to know my neighbors. I'm going to start to have people over for dinner. I'm going to notice that single person that I've never noticed that's across the street that I don't even see very often and invite them over." One of my good friends, she's gotten to know the single person across the street that is in his 80s, and he's very cranky. The street really doesn't like him because he's always complaining about things.

She was like, "You know what, he needs God. I'm going to love him and pursue him." She takes him flowers all the time, takes him food all the time, invited him over for his birthday and said, "Bring any of your friends you want." He brought one friend, and the two of them sat there and told stories for a long time.

He complained the whole time about things, and the friend was hitting him and saying, "Stop complaining. This is so lovely. I can't believe you got invited over here. You need to be nicer." Yet, she is determined to make that man fall in love with their family and then hopefully fall in love with God. We've just got to be people that notice.

We have the answers. We have a relationship with God and we have hopefully local churches where there's some sense of connection even if it's not a village-like existence. We have those connections, that potential. So how do we invite people into it? How do we pursue it and prioritize it in such a way that we look different?

Because contagious Christianity begins with contagious community. When you see people loving each other well—and Jesus said that; that’s not my words, that's His—He said they will know you by your love for one another. That's how everybody would know you're one of Mine. We're not great at that, but I think we could get better.

In the middle of this research, I pulled aside one of my friends that was moving from a group with roommates to an apartment by herself. I, with tears, said, "I do not know if that's the best idea." And I know some people listening live alone, and some people that is just their lot right now, but I would challenge every presupposition to that because I believe it is not good for man to be alone. God said that.

What does it look like to maybe take—one of my friends, what she did as a single, she still wanted to live alone, but she moved into a little complex with other people that she knew. So she has a townhouse and she got to know all her neighbors, and they have cookouts at night and they all spend time in their little courtyard together. She made a choice about where she would live alone that she wouldn't be alone.

I just think we've got to make choices that we have to realize there is nothing worse for our health, and science has proven it. Loneliness is the worst thing for our health. Loneliness is worse than smoking, overeating, or lack of exercise. If you just do it because it's not good for you, that matters.

Dave Wilson: You said that, and I have a part of a book from John Ortberg years ago he wrote. You ever see this? He said people who had bad health habits—smoking, poor eating, obesity, alcohol—but strong social ties lived significantly longer than people who had great health habits but were isolated.

His commentary was, in other words, it's better to eat Twinkies with good friends than to eat broccoli alone. Another study in the *Journal of the American Medical Association*, 276 volunteers were infected with a virus that produces the common cold. The study found that people with strong emotional connections did four times better fighting off illness than those who were more isolated.

These people were less susceptible to colds, had less virus, and produced significantly less mucus than relationally isolated subjects. He said, "I'm not making this up. They produced less mucus." That means it's literally true; unfriendly people are snottier than friendly people.

Here's what I'm hearing. As you listen to themes that God brings into the church and the Christian community, you start to notice. A few years ago I'm like, "Wow, every worship song that I love is about identity right now, like who we are in Christ," which was beautiful. And you notice another one, sermons as I was preaching. I think this is something God is bringing to us right now because we need it and we're all aware we need it.

Ann Wilson: One of the things you said, Jennie, was you and your friends, as you're beginning to get to know each other, you did your timeline. You told your life story in about 20 minutes. That's something that we've been doing too, and it's a great way to start. I did that with my friend Michelle. We would just go out to dinner and I would say, "Tell me your story."

There's something about revealing who you are and what you've gone through that makes you really see the person. In that, we've done that recently with a new group of friends where they just told their story. As we listened, this is kind of a small group of couples, and as we listened, then what we did was we spoke life into them after they shared it and even empathized with their hard points.

In that timeline, in 20 minutes you're sharing your highs but you're sharing your lows. So to say, "Wow, I can't imagine how hard that was for you to experience that, and thanks for going deep and revealing those pains and struggles and the hurts in your life," it was amazing, wasn't it, Dave?

Dave Wilson: Yeah, but it's scary. A lot of people hear that and they're like, "I'm not going there."

Jennie Allen: You’re actually describing one of the things I share in the book, which is the science says that what we want from people—we actually don't want answers, we don't want to be fixed. That is not what we want. We want to be seen, soothed, and safe. That right there is excellent marriage advice. If you're listening and you're like, "We have a hard marriage," if you just make your spouse feel seen, soothed, and safe, that goes so far.

Most people think what they want and what they want to give is answers. We want to fix people, we want to—when someone says something hard, we're like, "But..." and we're immediately giving the positive. I've learned from counseling someone is sharing something with me not because they need me to fix it, but they're probably sharing it with me because they don't want to be alone in it.

And so when we can be with people in difficulty, it's why the Bible says mourn with those who mourn. There's a gift in just being with someone in their struggles and in their disappointments. One of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten and will give until I die is when someone shares something with you, to do what your friend did: to listen, to say what you hear back, and to say, "I'm so sorry."

Dave Wilson: Men, are you listening right now? Because I've blown that so many times.

Ann Wilson: I do it too, Dave. I try to fix.

Dave Wilson: I remember one time, Ann, kids were little, she was sharing with me how hard it was that day.

Ann Wilson: I had a bad day. Wait, I have to tell Jennie. So I'm sharing all that. Dave goes, "I'll be right back." He goes upstairs, comes down with a little piece of paper. I thought, "Oh, he wrote me a love note. He's thankful. He's going to share all the things he loves." It's numbered one to ten, and I'm thinking, "Oh, these are the ten reasons why I'm a good mom."

And so I pick it up and I look at it and I read out loud, "Number one..." and I look at him. "Get more organized."

Dave Wilson: Oh, dear. I'm going to throw this walkie-talkie at him.

Ann Wilson: And then number two was "Use your time more wisely." I said, "What is this?"

Dave Wilson: Okay, that's enough. That's enough. You don't need the rest. There were ten of those.

Ann Wilson: And so you know what I did? I ripped it up and said, "You think this?" And he goes, "I prayed about this." I said, "You did not pray about this. This is from Satan." And I ripped it up and threw it in his face.

Dave Wilson: But 40 years ago, what did I ask her? I'm like, "That's not what you want?" She told me just what you said: "I want to be seen, soothed, and safe." She didn't use those words, but that's exactly what she wanted. I think we miss that.

Jennie Allen: The book I wrote before this was called *Get Out of Your Head*, and I did all this research on the brain. Our brains by God were built this way. We actually were built not to need information; we were built needing connection.

It was why this was the next book that I had to write, because when I did all the work on the brain, I realized this is the greatest healing tool we have. This is the greatest gift we have on earth. It's God first, but on earth, it's God through people. I think that is the way He built us, was to require each other, to belong to each other.

That is how He built us. And so it is actually built into our brains. For guys that need some science behind it, how does that help? Your brain decompresses, all the little pathways reopen when you feel understood and seen and known, and there's something in your brain that begins to heal.

And so that's why for trauma, you go to therapy because not so that you can get fixed and hear advice, but so that you can process that story and feel in a safe environment and feel soothed and seen and understood. That is why therapy works; it's a relationship where you get to talk about the hurts that you've had. So it's worth it, guys, that are diminishing this plan.

Dave Wilson: Man, what a great day with Jennie Allen. Again, her book is called *Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World*.

Ann Wilson: And you can get your copy by clicking the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com.

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Ann Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.