This is such a personal thing for people. I don’t have a simple 3 step program for how to make friends. I can’t guarantee perfect outcomes because everyone’s individual situation is so different. I can tell you what I have done and hope that it is helpful to someone.
In a nutshell, it’s this: I said, “yes” to lots and lots of things. More things than I even wanted to do.
I joined three different Bible studies at three different churches.
Is that a little odd? Maybe. Not one of them was at the church we attended when we first came to Tennessee. This gave me a lot of experience with a broad range of women.
If I knew of any acquaintance that was having a social function, I would attend it.
I went to everything. Pampered chef parties. Girls nights out. Lunch dates after Bible study.
When we were not finding a way to get connected at our church, we decided to go to a different one.
This was, by far, the most important thing we did to make friends here. It was important to me that I have close friends where I went to church. When that wasn’t happening at the place we first attended, we made a change. It changed everything. We found a church full of people who had room in their hearts and their lives for friendships. I have no idea if that is uncommon.
Once we knew we could connect at our new church, we found ways to serve.
We taught Sunday School, helped with Bible studies, assisted with Bible Bowl. In the process of serving, I had the opportunity to spend quality time with people getting to know them.
I worked through hurt over relationships that didn’t end up looking like I hoped.
Sometimes I wonder if people that hear our story of moving here assume everything went smoothly and we had no lonely times or hurt during our settling-in process. It wasn’t all smooth sailing. I’ve had some very deep pain in regard to different friendships here in the past 4 1/2 years. Some of it was because I had been pursuing friendships that weren’t healthy for me. Some of it came from learning how to allow friends to be in a different season than I was. Friendships don’t always look the same every year. That’s part of life, growing, parenting demands and other challenges. We aren’t always on the same exact page all the time.
This was such a key thing for me. I believe now, in retrospect, that God was helping me learn not to rely too much on any one friend.
In the years that we’ve lived here and I’ve had a chance to get to know different new people, there have been different seasons where I have been more or less available to reach out to people. Experiencing first-hand how my ability to reach out and pour into others ebbs and flows when I’m dealing with traumatic things on the homefront, has given me more grace for others. I can imagine more easily why people seem busy with their own things.
I said “yes” even if I wanted to stay home.
As an introvert, I often want to stay home. Evening social things, are at high risk of getting cancelled because I’m tired and can’t imagine doing the work it takes to build/start another friendship. I’ve been tempted to bow out so many times. More times than not, I give myself a pep talk and go out anyway. I end up glad that I did even if I’m a little (or a lot) tired.
I know friendships are hard. I don’t know your life stage. I know certain stages are harder than others. I certainly don’t have all the answers and I have not always been a perfect friend, but I think going through a big transition helped me learn a few things about friendship I hadn’t already figured out. Honestly, I still have times where I feel lonely, but I’m learning those times are always going to be with me and there are valuable things to learn in the lonely seasons too (maybe I’ll write about that tomorrow. . .)/