Becoming Well With Liz Tafadzwa

Hello Becoming Well Community.  The 20s is a decade in one’s life that is arguably overwhelming because it is the first stage into adulthood. While it is the time when you have the most amount of energy and sense of curiosity, when not stewarded well it can become a weapon. Whether that becomes a weapon or an asset largely depends on the friends you have. In developmental psychology, they call the stage between 18-25 years (sometimes up to 29) emerging adulthood. It is a time that constitutes identity exploration, lack of stability, transitions, a desire for relational connections and settling down, etc. You may already identify with some of these characteristics because you are going through it or going through it.

Yet, in one’s quest to carve out a career path, settle down with a life partner, settle the identity question of “who am I,” friendship is one area that many people in their 20s find themselves struggling in. Though women are more vocal about friendships, it does not mean men don’t go through the same struggles. Why? Because God made you and me with an inherent need for community. I don’t care what social media, your favorite influencer, an A-list celebrity, or your emotions tell you about people, but you NEED people. You need friends in your life because as you get older, you will most likely not spend every waking hour with your family. In addition, life will come with both good and bad seasons. You need friends to celebrate and enjoy those good seasons, and you also need friends who will stand with you is hard seasons.

So now that I have shared some honest realities about the twenties and why you need friends, how do you actually cultivate and steward the right friends? As I mentioned earlier, the twenties demand a lot out of you because you are doing a lot of figuring out of life and in as much as you would want to spend the same amount of time you spent with your friends in high school, sometimes it is not practical or you don’t have as much capacity as you used to have. However, this does not mean it is impossible. Here are 5 practical ways to better navigate friendships in your 20s:

1. Create Margin In Your Life 
2. Study the needs of your friends in their current seasons
3. Work On Your Communication
4. Foster diversity in your friendship circle
5. Prioritize intellectual and spiritual capital in your chosen friends

1. Create Margin In Your Life

Yes, this is my first point because this is a common excuse I hear a lot of my fellow twenties say and I have also been guilty of doing this. We share posts like “ having low maintenance friendships is the best thing, having friends who you won’t speak to for months, but when you pick up the phone it feels like you have been talking every day.” While this sounds great and validates our overbooked schedules and endless to-do lists, I don’t believe that is God’s idea of kingdom friendships. Why? Because God values people and when you truly love someone you do things they love and value. That means as as a child of God if you identify with that, I must value my friends over some of the “chasing the bag tasks.” Creating margin allows you to say NO to certain things and intentionally put a limit to what you commit to so you have time, energy, and capacity to cultivate and/or steward your friendships. That may look like blocking out a time once a week to check in on a friend, call a friend, meet up with a friend or visit a friend. The greatest expression of love is the sacrifice of your time. When you give your time to someone, you are in essence telling them you love them. If this feels a little untrue, how much time are you willing to put into your hustle as a twenty-something-year-old? How much time are you willing to give to your partner? The time allocation exposes what you value and love most and creating a margin to give those things/people time shows how much love you have for them.

2. Study the needs of your friends in their current seasons

This is one that breaks friendships unnecessarily because we are too busy with our own lives that we overlook the needs of our friends. Everything is ALWAYS about “me” that you don’t have time or capacity to think of others. I am including myself on this. John 15:13 says “ There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” How do you think this verse will be received on social media today? You probably know how that will go, yet this verse is letting us know that the greatest expression of love is to sacrifice your comfort for your friends to meet their needs. This is not to say you bow deuces to your own life, but it’s to say as a wise friend you should be able to discern or ask your friends what they need help/support in and you go out of your way to serve them that way. In our twenties, some are in college/university, starting new jobs, starting a business, getting married, having babies, moving cities or countries, etc. Your friend who just had a baby may need you to bring some cooked meals for her family that can push her and her family for a couple of days and clean the house, so she can take care of the newborn without an overwhelmed and stimulated mind and body. The one still in college may need encouraging words and prayer during exam week when they are stressed and you attending their graduation/graduation party while the one who just moved to their apartment may need extra hands with their move and assistance in unpacking things around the house without you complaining about it the entire time and how you would have been doing something. While this feels like a lot in a culture that preaches “ if it gets too much, cut it off for your peace,” sacrificing for your friend may feel like daylight robbery. Even if the friend may not reciprocate in the time you wanted them to or ever, know that what you did for them will not go in vain because you sowed seeds and the one who will reap a harvest is you.

3. Work On Your Communication

This builds off of the previous point. Ghosting, gossiping, and conflicts are all communication problems. Gossiping may seem easier and natural in your twenties because sometimes that’s the last thing left hanging between you and your friend. Yet, Proverbs 16:28 says “ A troublemaker plants seeds of strife, and gossip separates the best of friends.” If gossip is the only glue tying you and your friend, it is time to either change the nature of conversations and be the bold one to communicate an end to it or you might end up being a victim of the termination of that friendship. Ghosting may seem easier because you haven’t learned how to communicate yet that is the right environment you can leverage to learn how to communicate whether to lovingly confront your friend or end the friendship amicably. Again, since the twenties is a whole lot of figuring out, it is easy to come to premature conclusions that your friend does not support your work because they didn’t like your post, delayed saying congratulations on an achievement so they are “jealous”, or was a week late to say happy birthday without knowing what could have also made them do that. Could they have lost a parent, just broken up with a person they thought would be their life partner, or are in the thick of board exams and are offline and forgot to let you know that they would be offline? Lack of communication is what often leads many of us to cut off friends in our lives before time, robbing each other of the fruits you would have both enjoyed had you both worked on your communication.

4. Foster diversity in your friendship circle

You may been a victim of this, where all your friends are individuals who are all working in the same industry as you, lived on the same hallway as you in university, are in the same season of life, think the way you think, share the same passions as you, and have the same background as you and look the way you look. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, as I am half way through my twenties I am realizing the value in having diversity in my friendship circle. They sharpen me and I sharpen them. Proverbs 17:17 says “As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.” Having at least 50% of your friends in your circle who do the opposite and are the opposite of you is so important as you navigate your twenties. Why? Because this a stage of life where we are tempted to only befriend people who are in the same season as us and in as much as that sounds great, as you get older you will realize seasons will continue to change, the season that once brought you together will eventually be the thing that pulls you apart because that is the only thing that brought you together. Having diversity in your friendships demands a depth that you have to cultivate and when it grows, it has the power to weather many seasons of life if they a meant to be a lifetime friend. Even if they are a “chapter” friend, that chapter will add immense value to your life story. Differences challenge your self-centeredness and need to always be agreed with, they bring an alternative perspective that you wouldn’t have been able to see and it also teaches you to study and meet the needs of people. At the time of me writing this, I am single and still in college, and my best friend of 15 years has been married for almost 3 years now and graduated from college, one of my close friends is almost 10 years older than me, and a Catholic, the other one is a year younger than me, lives in Australia, works in the interior design and architectural industry and the perfect example of a coconut ( a black person with a white person personality and lifestyle). The three girls I met at my current college who have become more like little sisters are all more than 4 years younger than me and geared towards STEM and I am the complete opposite. Two of them love art and the other is into crocheting and MADEA and I am not that girl. My other two friends in my inner circle, love Hillsong and I don’t fancy their music all that much. One of them, who is also white is a die-hard camper with her husband and I am not sure I can even do more than 3 nights camping in as much as I love nature. Yet with all of them, I have a healthy strong, and individual relationship with them and they constantly challenge me to grow and grow up from the false idea that “my way is always the best.” It also helps me in my job where you work with people who are incredibly different from me and that is a reality that a lot of twenty-something year olds struggle the most with as they start working full time.

5. Prioritize intellectual and spiritual capital in your chosen friends

This is a stage of your life where you are most likely focused on personal and career development, yet for many of us, our growth is sabotaged because we are friends with people who are intellectually and spiritually shallow. Proverbs 12: 26 says “The godly give good advice to their friends and the wicked lead them astray,” but how does a friend give good advice when they are intellectually and/or spiritually dull? I am not exactly sure why we villainize our friends who have constantly shown us that they have no capacity to stimulate and challenge you in these two key areas of your life. A good way to know if a friend has intellectual and spiritual capital is by watching what and how much they read, what they listen to and watch, their relationship and frequency with God and the Bible, their ability to pray, how they respond to your ideas, what they contribute to conversations, how they think and their appetite to learn.  You may love them so much but if there is no sign in sight that they desire to grow intellectually or spiritually or are receptive to your demonstration of your personal investment then it may be safer to part ways at some point and love them from a distance. I love Proverbs 27: 9 that says “The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense.” When you are in the presence of a friend who invests in their intellectual and spiritual growth the conversations are just different. You are always left edified, you are challenged to expand your vision and stay on the path of integrity as you build, you learn something from them each time you have a conversation with them and you are inspired to develop yourself. The opposite is true. Intellectually and spiritually dry friends will leave you considering abandoning your God-given vision, a higher tolerance to undermine your integrity as you build, you have no desire to do better, a relationship with God becomes a toll order because “people are winning without God anyway.”

I hope you found this one helpful and insightful. I am in my twenties too, and I know how demanding it may feel with trying to figure out a lot, but don’t neglect your friends. You thrive in community and I want you to have healthy and valuable friendships. Comment down below what stood out to you and feel free to share and also subscribe so you can get notified every time there is a new post. Remember you are loved and seen. I will see you on the next one.