The Inner Circle
Friendship, mental health, and why the right people change everything
Here is the full rewrite:
There is a short passage in Ecclesiastes that does not get nearly enough attention.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up.” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)
Solomon was one of the wisest people who ever lived. And one of the things he was clearest about was this: you were not built to do life alone. Not marriage. Not hard seasons. Not the ordinary weight of being a human being trying to follow Jesus in a complicated world.
You need people.
But not just any people. The right people.
And that distinction matters more than most of us want to admit.
Filled or Drained
Here is something most people already know but rarely say out loud.
Some relationships fill you up. You walk away from them feeling refocused, refueled, and more like yourself than when you arrived. You can say the hard thing. You can be honest about where you actually are. And the person across from you does not flinch.
Other relationships drain you. You leave feeling guarded, depleted, and vaguely like you just performed a version of yourself rather than actually showed up. Nothing was technically wrong. But something was definitely off.
You already know which relationships are which. You feel it every time.
What you may not have considered is how much that difference is shaping your mental and emotional health over time.
This Is a Mental Health Issue
Most people think of mental health in clinical terms. Anxiety. Depression. Burnout. Those things are real and they deserve to be taken seriously.
But a lot of what quietly erodes mental and emotional health is relational. It is the slow drain of being around people who take more than they give. It is the exhaustion of never being fully known. It is carrying weight that was never meant to be carried alone because you have never built relationships where you can actually set it down.
Proverbs 12:25 says, “Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up.”
The right words from the right people at the right moment carry real weight. They do not solve everything. But they change something.
The right people in your life are not a luxury. They are part of how God designed you to stay healthy.
What the Right People Actually Look Like
My wife Allison and I have a handful of people in our lives who have been with us through the highs and the lows. Mark and Heather are two of them. Long tenured. Seen the good versions of us and the harder ones. Never cared about my role or my title. Just showed up and stayed. They have celebrated alongside our kids and we have done the same. We have lived a lot of life together.
When I walk away from time with those people I feel two things consistently: refocused and refueled.
I feel brought back to myself.
That is what the right people do.
And here is what that actually looks like in practice for me, because I think most people overcomplicate it.
With my friends…We text. We grab lunch. We meet for coffee. We use the Marco Polo app to send voice and video messages when life does not allow for sitting across a table. We find ways to stay in contact regularly because intentionality is the only thing that keeps relationships from drifting.
Nothing is off the table. We encourage each other. We challenge each other. We laugh, a lot, and that matters more than people realize. Proverbs 17:22 says a cheerful heart is good medicine. Joy is not a distraction from the serious work of friendship. It is part of it.
No formal agenda. Just people who keep showing up for each other consistently.
The format is not the point. The consistency is.
Not Everyone Who Calls You Friend Is One
This needs to be said honestly.
Some people are present in your life because of what they can get from being close to you. And when you are no longer useful, they drift. You know who these people are. You feel it after every interaction. Drained. Slightly less yourself than before.
The wrong people do not just fail to fill you. They actively deplete you. And if you are surrounded by enough of them for long enough, that depletion starts to look like depression, burnout, or anxiety when really it is the cost of chronic relational poverty.
This is not a reason to become cynical about people. It is a reason to become intentional about who you let close.
Not everyone gets the same level of access to your life.
How to Start Building the Right Relationships
The best friendships in my life developed over time, around shared experience and genuine interest in each other. You cannot manufacture that. But you can create conditions for it.
A few honest starting points:
Show up without an agenda. The right friendships form when you are genuinely interested in another person, not in what they can do for you. Be that kind of person first.
Give it time. Real friendship is not built in a season. It is built over years of showing up, being honest, and staying when things get inconvenient.
Find people who know you, not just your role. If everyone in your inner circle knows you primarily by your job title, your family situation, or your social media version of yourself, that is a gap worth addressing. You need people who know your name before they know your resume.
Be honest first. The fastest way to build real friendship is to be real first. Not performatively vulnerable, just honest. The right people will meet you there.
Stay in contact consistently. Use whatever works. Text, coffee, lunch, Marco Polo. The method does not matter. The consistency does.
Let Ecclesiastes be your standard. Find people who will lift you up when you fall. And be that person for someone else.
The Closing Thought
Jesus did not do life with everyone equally.
He had the crowds. He had the seventy. He had the twelve. And within the twelve He had three, Peter, James, and John, who were closest when the moments mattered most.
Even Jesus had an inner circle.
You are not meant to be equally available to everyone. You are meant to have a few people who actually know you. People who leave you refocused and refueled. People who will sit with you in the hard moments and laugh with you in the good ones. People who show up and stay.
Solomon said it plainly. Two are better than one.
Not because one is not enough spiritually. But because God built you for real connection. The kind that costs something and gives back more.
If you have those people, protect those relationships. Do not let busyness erode them. Keep nothing off the table.
If you do not have those people yet, start moving toward them. Be the kind of friend you are looking for. Give it time. And trust that God, who said it is not good for man to be alone, is not indifferent to your loneliness.
The right people change everything.
Go find them.