Your 20s. "The best time of your life." Well, it can be. The season of life between age 20 and 30 is a rich one. A season packed with new experiences and an unprecedented amount of freedom. However, it is also season marked by lots of change, an abnormal amount of moving, and tiny temporary living spaces. On top of that, this decade brings increased responsibility and bittersweet transitions as friends move away, enter new seasons of life, and actually have things to do other than just hang out with you (thank you, college, for giving us all a fun but false perception of reality).
Our 20s seem so carefree when we're dreaming about them as wide-eyed, idealistic high school graduates. But what we can't foresee at that time is the rather bumpy road that lies ahead of most of us. I've had this recurring thought that maybe, while embracing all the rich joys that come along with our 20s, we just need to call it what it is: crazy, difficult, and sometimes super lonely.
On Instagram and Facebook, we know how to make life look GOOD. Everything in our posts is fun and filtered and full of cool people. But there are so many moments and milestones that would be less pleasant to include on our Instagram feed. The strangeness of moving out of your parents' house, then moving back in again at some point, then finally out again, this time maybe forever (or moving back in yet again to pay off school debt. Or maybe that was just us.) Trying to find roommates and apartments and learning that not everyone lives like you and that bills are expensive and actually need to be paid. The feeling of being left behind when a best friend gets married and you're still single. The lonely Saturday nights watching a rom-com wishing you were the one wearing the white dress instead of the 27 other dresses that you will not, in fact, shorten and wear again. The tension of being married and trying to cultivate friendships with other married couples while still trying to invest in all your other friends so they don't feel left behind.
As I talk to young adults in my ministry and life - and reflect back on the past few years of my own life - a common struggle woven through many stories is the struggle of change and transition in friendships. Sometimes it just happens, for whatever reason, with almost no warning or acknowledgment. Distance. Loss of closeness. Months later you find yourself wondering why something is "off" and how it happened. But it DOES happen. Friends move away. We move away. Friends make new friends and we get left out, or we make new friends and leave others out. A friend gets married or gets a new job. Or we get married or enter a new season full of new relationships. This decade is marked by celebrating with your friends, even if it stings because you wish your life was that great. But you don't want to quench their joy by letting them see you looking sad. Conversely, other times it can feel like you need to manage your own excitement as you rejoice over something in your life that you know a friend is desperately longing for and praying for. You get married and your best friend is still single. You land a great job while a friend is still working as an unpaid intern. You get pregnant but your friend is smack dab in the middle of a a brutal journey with infertility. You buy a house while your friend is still living with his parents. And you cant help but feel guilty around them. Friendships go both ways. It will be their turn at some point and it will be your turn at some point. I've found that sometimes it is better, in the words of author Shauna Niequist, to just "say something." Acknowledge that something has affected the way you do life together as friends. Rather than make it anyone's fault, make room for a conversation about how life and transition in this season is crazy and tricky for all of us. Build a bridge, not a wall.
Also, is there any other decade where people can be in SO many different seasons in one 10-year span of life?! For the love. Going to college, not going to college, getting married, working full time, not working, having babies, travelling the world, renting apartments, living with parents, buying houses. While we're on the subject, in the past 10 years of my life, I have moved at least 13 times! Hello. That'll make you tired. But that is the reality for so many of us.
Gone are the days when we were friends with people solely because they were in the same grade as us. When I was in fifth grade, I was typically friends with fifth graders. Dorm life is probably the next best thing. In college, at least if you live on campus at a Christian college like I did, community is kind of served to you on a shiny silver platter. Hanging out every day, living together, and sharing nearly all waking moments with your friends seems almost too good to be true. Because it kind of is. When I moved off campus for the first time my junior year and then graduated two years later, I realized that true community takes a heck of a lot of work and effort. My best friend and I roomed together our freshmen and sophomore year. Once we stopped living together, we lamented about how we actually had to text each other or plan coffee dates to hang out. It sounds silly but at the time it was a big adjustment! Suddenly we had to put each other in our calendars rather than just talking and laughing until 1:00 a.m. across the room from our twin beds.
I've noticed in my own life and in the lives of those around me that everyone in their 20s is facing a unique set of challenges. Asking hard questions. Who are my people? What do I really want to do with my life? What does God want me to do with my life? How am I going to make this all work? How can I pursue my dreams AND go to school? How will I pay for it all? How do I cultivate my friendships with those who are in a different season of life than me? If you're anything like me, its easy to start feeling lonely. A downward spiral of a thought process begins and goes something like this. . . maybe I don't really fit with anyone in any of the seasons. I'm not in college so I don't quite fit with all the cool college people anymore... but I'm married so I'm in a different spot than my single friends and maybe they think I'm so busy being "married" (whatever that means) so they don't ask me to hang out ... but I don't hang out a ton with married people because in my ministry I spend time with a lot of younger, single people ... and now I have a baby so I'm in a different season than my friends without babies. So who am I even friends with?
My husband laughs at/ with me sometimes because, if I hear of an event or a gathering that I wasn't invited to, I'll get sad and tell him. He usually says something thoughtful like, "Well I'm sure we could show up anyway, do you want to go?" And I'll respond, "Of course not, I'm too tired! I just wanted to be invited!"
Is that just a me thing? Or a girl thing? Or a human-with-insecurities thing? I know I can be ridiculous sometimes, but I think maybe at least one other person can relate. I hope. As I've worked through some of my own feelings of isolation and loneliness, I've chosen to believe that I'm not the only one. No matter what season we're in, maybe we've all bought into the lie that no one is going through what we're going through. The lie that no one understands where we're at. Perhaps understanding that reality in our own lives and allowing it to help us see others with compassion, rather than envy, is exactly what we need.
The feelings of loneliness that we all wrestle with at times can either build walls between us or build bridges. Let's choose bridges. Let's press in and have conversations and invite each other to be honest. Instead of being discouraged and resentful about all of the people who aren't asking us to hang out, let's be the ones who decide to reach out. Even if its awkward. Even if we wish someone else would initiate. All of us are hungry for true, meaningful relationships. But it won't happen on accident. We won't wake up when we're 30 and think, "How in the world did my friendships get so deep and meaningful?" It will take work. It will require transparency. It will require humility.
Let's not settle for doing this decade alone. We need each other, and I think others need us.
"And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." Hebrews 10:24-25
