Being one out of 5,000 people on a small college campus can seem a little overwhelming. (I don't know how you do it if you attend a school with 20,000+ students). It seems like we are always surrounded by people, homework and social activities we can take part in. But even with all of this going on, I can sometimes feel alone in what seems like a room full of people. Has anyone else ever thought this too?

It's Saturday afternoon, you're sitting on your couch watching Grey's Anatomy, and you're scrolling through Instagram and Snapchat to see what everyone else is up to at that exact moment. You come across some of your friends eating lunch at the dining hall and you're not there.

You might instantly feel a little bit of FOMO, but you brush it off. However, if you're like me, you may think the absolute worst of the situation and think you have no friends and are totally alone.... because you weren't invited to lunch. When these kinds of situations happen, I can let that one thought consume me. I begin to feel like the loneliest person in the world.

But then, I began to realize something. The actual action of not going to lunch with some of my friends isn't what was hurting me. It was the negative thought spiral I would turn it into.

Up until about a week or two ago, I would sit in my sorrow and feel bad for myself. I would think that no one else had ever felt lonely or sad, that it was just me. Then, I realized how untrue that was. (It literally came to me out of nowhere.)

Jesus, the man who died on the cross for my sins, felt loneliness when his disciples deserted him. He felt lonely when he had to carry his own cross to the very hill to where he would die. He knew how I felt, and that is what changed me.

I began to reach out to my friends about feeling lonely, and they calmed my fears of being the only one who felt this way. This will feel very, very hard at first, to reach out. But once you do, it's totally worth it. These moments of pain are where you will find your people. Because these moments of pain are where I found mine.