Be a Teammate to Lonely Children and Youth
A person of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a sibling. (Proverbs 18:24)
Whether you talk to teachers at the local public school or read the news, you will find that young people are struggling in the aftermath of Covid. Social relationships have shifted, with many young people feeling more comfortable typing on their phones rather than face-to-face, with actual words. If my Granny were alive today and I told her everyone had a phone they carried around, but people would rarely use it to talk, she would think I was living in an alternate universe.
When you are 61 years old, time goes fast. I cannot imagine how 100-year-old people can handle the speed of life. Yet, when you are five years old, a day feels like a lifetime. I remember my nine-year-old self lying in a boat at my grandmother's lake cabin, watching the clouds move past, and an afternoon felt like forever. My two years of COVID-19 flew by in what seemed a blur, but for 5, 15, or even 25-year-olds, it was a 2-year lifetime of loneliness and loss. Covid was also a painful time for extroverts. Introverts were freed to experience time with less stress. Extraverts were stressed out by the inability to make emotional connections.
In Exceptional, Daniel M. Cable helps us understand when he says, "But our subconscious knows when we are idling, and a part of us dwindles as our potential curdles inside us." For Cable, this generation feels they are "forfeiting our own potential." Hopeless and suicide rates have risen dramatically since COVID-19 due to the factors described. The paradox is that while COVID seemed like 20 years instead of 2, it also felt like young and extraverted lives dried up so quickly. It helps to name the problem, but that alone will not bring healing.
Wholeness is not easy to reclaim, but it remains possible. At the likely expense of sounding simplistic, we must begin with prayer. My most profound moments of loneliness and despair found comfort in the companionship with God through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Next, our task is to be God's presence in the world through being there for others. There are ways to care and be a healing hand in the present moment of children's suffering. I mentor a fifth grader at a local elementary school and am on the board for "Teammates," a school mentoring program. Let me know if you want to be part of God's healing process in young lives, and I will help make you an instrument of healing with a mentee of your own.