Soul Food Part 1.5: The Cost and the Call of Friendship

If you read Part 1, you know how I feel about the friendships God has placed in my life. But feeling it and building it are two very different things. This post is about the second part — the effort, the awkwardness, the cost, and what the Bible actually says about why it is all worth it.

I also want to talk about something that does not get said enough: a lot of people reading this are lonely right now. And they are not saying it out loud either.

We Have a Problem

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General did something unprecedented. He declared loneliness a public health epidemic — the same language used for obesity, opioids, and COVID-19. Not a lifestyle issue. Not a personality quirk. A public health crisis.

The numbers back it up. A 2025 Cigna survey found that more than half of Americans — 57% — report feeling lonely. One in three adults feels lonely at least once a week. Among young adults aged 18 to 34, nearly 30% report feeling lonely daily or several times a week. And the physical toll is not abstract — chronic loneliness has been linked to increased risks of heart disease, stroke, depression, and dementia. Researchers have compared the health impact of loneliness to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

We are the most digitally connected generation in human history. We have never been more alone.

Part of what is driving this is the quiet disappearance of what sociologists call “third places” — the spaces outside of home and work where people naturally run into each other, build familiarity, and form real connection over time. Coffee shops. Churches. Gyms. Neighborhood gathering spots. These spaces are closing or emptying out. Remote work removed the office. Church attendance has been declining for decades. And when the third place disappears, connection stops happening naturally and starts requiring effort — and for a lot of people, that effort feels like too much.

I know because I lived it.

The 2.5 Years I Pretended I Was Fine

I grew up an extrovert. In high school I was constantly out, constantly meeting people, always doing something social. It felt natural. Easy.

Then I moved to Boise. And for two and a half years, I had almost no social life outside of Maddy. No real friends. No community. Just the two of us, and work, and home.

And here is the part that gets me when I look back on it: I convinced myself I was fine. I told myself I was just an introvert now. That I liked being home. That I did not really need people the way I used to. I found others who lived the same way and made them my reference point, my proof that this was just who I was. I told that story so many times I started to believe it fully.

I was not fine. I was lonely and rationalizing it.

If you are reading this and you recognize that pattern in yourself — the slow drift into isolation that you have dressed up as preference or personality — I want you to know that I see you. And more importantly, God sees you, and He did not design you for this.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” — Matthew 22:39 (ESV)

Jesus called this the second greatest commandment. Not a suggestion. Not a personality type. A command. And here is the thing — you cannot love your neighbor if you never leave the house. You cannot pour into people you never sit across from. Isolation is not a neutral choice. It is a slow drift away from one of the most direct instructions Jesus ever gave us.

What Changed

What broke the isolation for me was two things: finding a church community and deciding to lean into awkward.

Every single meaningful friendship I have now came from doing something uncomfortable. Saying “let’s get lunch” to someone I barely knew. Saying yes when I got invited somewhere even when I did not feel like it. Showing up to the first meal where the conversation was stilted and neither of us really knew each other yet. Some of those early attempts did not turn into much. That is fine. All of it was practice. All of it was sowing into people even when I did not know what would grow.

Was it hard? Yes. Was it awkward? Absolutely. Was it stressful? Did it cause tons of overthinking? Did I initiate way more than the other person in the beginning? Yes to all of it. Was it worth it? Without question.

The church was the third place that changed everything for me. Not because churches are perfect or because everyone there instantly became my best friend, but because it gave me a community of people pointed in the same direction. And most importantly, that direction was God. Every relationship that came out of that community was centered on Him — which is exactly what made the depth possible. A gym gets you around people. A bar gets you around people. Church gets you around people who are all being actively drawn closer to the Lord, and when that is the foundation, everything else builds differently.

It also gave me a place where showing up repeatedly around the same people was built into the structure. That repetition — seeing the same faces, having the same conversations, building up trust slowly over time — is exactly how real friendship forms. You cannot manufacture it. You just have to keep showing up.

If you do not have a third place, find one. It does not have to be a church, though I would argue that a church centered on Christ is the best possible one. A gym. A Bible study. A rec league. A community group of any kind. The point is a place where you encounter the same people regularly enough that familiarity has a chance to become something more.

Friendship Costs Everything

Here is what nobody tells you about building real friendships as an adult: it is expensive. Not just financially, though it is that too — more meals out than you planned, more coffees, more splitting the check. It costs time you do not always have. Sleep you sometimes sacrifice. Energy you have to give when you are already running low.

Real friendship requires you to be others-focused in a culture that is obsessively self-focused. It means sometimes you are the one doing most of the listening. Sometimes you are the one initiating over and over before they start initiating back. Sometimes you pour in more than you get out for a long stretch. That is not a problem with the friendship. That is what love looks like in practice.

I have had to learn this. My default used to be to keep a mental ledger — who reached out last, who is putting in more effort, whether things feel balanced. That kind of thinking will kill a friendship before it has a chance to grow. The goal is not balance. The goal is generosity.

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” — Philippians 2:3-4 (ESV)

God is not asking us to maintain a friendship where things feel equal. He is asking us to lay ourselves down for others. To be the one who gives more. To find our filling in Him and pour that out into the people around us.

God fills us. We fill others. That is the model.

This does not mean you pour endlessly into relationships that are harmful or one-directional forever. But it does mean the orientation of your heart going into any friendship should be — what can I give here, not what can I get.

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” — Proverbs 17:17 (ESV)

At all times. Not when it is convenient. Not when the effort feels equal. At all times.

You Are Not Weird for Being Lonely

I want to come back to the epidemic for a second because I think it matters.

You are not alone in feeling alone. More than half of Americans feel it. The Surgeon General called it a crisis. Young adults — your peers, my peers — are reporting the highest rates of loneliness of any generation despite being the most digitally connected. Generation Z, raised entirely on social media, has been called the loneliest generation in modern history.

There is a reason for that. When third places disappear, when remote work removes the office, when social media replaces the coffee shop, connection stops being something that happens to you and starts being something you have to fight for. Most people do not fight for it. They scroll instead. They tell themselves they are fine. They build a story about how they are just introverted now.

I know because that was me.

The loneliness you feel is not a character flaw. It is a cultural symptom. And the answer is not an app or a better algorithm. The answer is getting into a room with real people, repeatedly, over time, and being willing to be awkward until it is not awkward anymore.

The Call to Action

I want to end this one differently than I ended Part 1.

I do not just want to inspire you. I want you to actually do something today.

If you have a friend you have been meaning to reach out to — reach out right now. Not after you finish reading. Right now. Send the text. Make the plan. Say yes to the invitation you have been sitting on. Show up to the thing you keep talking yourself out of.

If you do not have a community — find a third place this week. A church. A gym. A Bible study. Somewhere you can show up consistently and let time do what time does.

And if you are in a season of isolation and you do not even know where to start — reach out to me. I mean that. I am not saying it to sound good. My number is 208-995-0212. Text me. Tell me where you are at. I will respond, I will listen, and I will help however I can. You are not a burden. You are exactly the kind of person I want to hear from.

Nobody is too far gone from community to find their way back. I am proof of that. And if God can build what He has built in my life from a season of isolation — He can do it for you too.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!” — Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (ESV)

Do not be the person with no one to help them up. And do not let the person next to you be that person either.

Go first. Lean into awkward. It is worth it. Every single time.