Making a Friend in a Ward Takes More Than One Invitation

I think we give new mothers the wrong job. We tell them to put themselves out there, we tell everyone else to be welcoming, and then we're surprised that a woman with a toddler on her hip can sit through a full year of Sundays and go home without one conversation longer than "he's getting so big."

Nobody in that picture is doing anything wrong, it's just that "put yourself out there" is an instruction with no handle on it and being welcoming mostly ends at the chapel doors. What I've watched start a friendship, in my own ward and in the three or four I've been close enough to see begin, is smaller and a bit more awkward than either one. Somebody asks somebody for something little. Then she does it again.

Why "let me know if you need anything" never gets used

I've said that sentence to maybe forty women and been taken up on it twice. It sounds generous, and it hands the other person a whole project: work out what she needs, decide she's allowed to need it, and then phone a near stranger and say so. A tired, lonely woman doesn't have that in her on a Tuesday.

I know because when Caleb was five months old and we'd just moved into this ward, a woman said it to me in the hall. I thought it was the kindest thing anyone said to me that whole month, and I never called her.

What a small ask looks like

The size of a pan. Can I borrow your nine-by-thirteen, do you know a pediatrician who doesn't make you wait an hour. Which of the Primary teachers does your daughter like. The question has to be easy to answer, it shouldn't be about how you're doing, and it should have a little tail on it. If she lends me the pan, I now owe her a pan, and returning a pan is a second conversation with a built-in reason that nobody has to invent.

Both of my Wednesday friends started this way, one over a cake carrier and one over the name of a pediatrician.

Try it before you're desperate. Asking for a small thing while you're fine is easy, and asking while you're drowning is how you end up telling a stranger far too much in the hallway.

You'll probably have to ask twice

The first ask usually goes nowhere, and it's almost never because she doesn't like you. She said sure, or she said she'd think about it, and then her Thursday happened to her. She's as tired as you are and she's not keeping score.

So ask again inside a month and make the second one a little different. A text counts. A text is probably better, because a text can be answered at 9:15 with a sleeping child on your shoulder and a conversation in the foyer can't.

It's unfair that you may be the one starting things for a long while.

It also seems to be how it goes, and the women I know with real ward friends are mostly the ones who got used to starting. I wrote a while back about how wrong I had a man in our pew, the one who kept turning around and turned out to be smiling at my baby. People in a ward are mostly friendlier than they look from the back of the room, which means your ask will land better than you fear.

What I'm not saying about loneliness

When I stopped teaching third grade I thought being home would feel like a rest from noise. I hadn't counted the staff room at lunch or the team that met on Tuesdays after school as friendship until they were gone. A job hands you people on a schedule. A house with a baby in it doesn't, and nobody warned me. The figure I keep seeing quoted is that up to 90 percent of new mothers feel lonely at some point. I can't tell you who counted, and I don't need a study to believe it. I don't think it's a test of faith or a season to bear quietly, either. I'd put it next to hunger or a splinter, something you take care of.

What John 15 has to do with a borrowed pan

I'm not going to hang a whole doctrine of friendship on one verse, and I know who He's talking to, at a table, the night before He was arrested.

Still, this line has stayed with me.

Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (John 15:15)

A servant gets instructions and a friend gets told what's going on. By that measure, the small ask is a small disclosure: I don't know a pediatrician here, I've never made this recipe, I'm new. You're telling her something true and a little unfinished, and she can answer it. That's the whole mechanism as far as I can see, and nobody gets there by being brave in the abstract.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it normal to feel this lonely at home with a toddler?

Yes, and I'd call it close to the default. It doesn't mean your marriage or your testimony is in trouble. If it's been heavy for weeks and you're not sleeping or eating the way you usually do, tell your doctor or someone you trust. That's not weakness, it's the same thing as telling someone about a fever.

What if I'm quiet and I hate small talk?

Then ask by text and keep it practical, because some of the sturdiest friendships I know are between women who almost never chat and mostly trade questions about pans and school forms, and you don't have to become someone else.

Should my friends be in the ward at all?

I have a college roommate in Spokane I voice-memo most days, and I couldn't do without her. She also can't bring a casserole to my door or watch Ben for ten minutes while I find a shoe. I'd say have both if you can, and expect the ward friends to be slower to start and handier once they have.

What do I ask for if I can't think of anything?

Look at what you're doing this week. A recipe, a good time to go to the library, whose kid has outgrown boots in a size you need, which door the nursery is behind. If you truly can't find a question, you probably haven't been out of the house that day, and the first small ask might be to whoever's mowing next door.

There's a young mother who moved into our ward in June, and she sits near the back with a baby carrier that I keep wanting to ask about because Ben is far too big for mine now. I don't know her name. When we're back in our own pew I'm going to find it out and ask her where she got the carrier, and the Sunday after that I'll ask her something else.

with love, Melissa