Lessons on Friendship From Over 15 Years as a Pastor's Wife

Why We Need Each Other and How to Build Lasting Bonds

By Laura Clary

Editorial note: This essay is adapted from a talk (audio mp3) my wife gave to a mom’s group in our church with her friend, Suzanne. But these lessons would be profitable for men and women.

Introduction

My friend Suzanne and I have been meaning to talk about friendship for years. Every semester, we’d sit down to plan topics for our women’s group at church, and friendship would come up, and then we’d never actually get around to it. I think we kept putting it off because it’s one of those topics that sounds simple but isn’t. Everybody agrees that friends matter. Nobody really wants to admit how hard it is to make them and keep them.

When we finally did sit down and have the conversation, what came out wasn’t a tidy lesson. It was messy and honest and a little all over the place—which, honestly, is kind of how friendship works in real life. What I want to do here is take the best of what we talked about and lay it out in a way that might be helpful, not just for the women in our church, but for anyone who’s ever felt like they’re the only person in the room who doesn’t have friends. Because I promise you, you’re not.

Why This Matters

This matters because life is going to get hard. There’s going to be a difficult diagnosis, a miscarriage, financial trouble, marriage trouble—you name it. And when that happens, your pastors can only do so much. You need people. You need people in your life that you can turn to when things fall apart.

When someone comes to us going through something hard, the first thing I think is: who are they connected to? What small group are they in? Do those people know what’s going on? Because that’s how the body of Christ is supposed to work. It’s not just showing up on Sunday and worshiping and leaving. We’re supposed to function together, and that only happens through real relationships.

The Lies We Believe About Friendship

One thing Suzanne kept hearing from people was the same story over and over: “I don’t have any friends. I can’t connect.” And what was wild is that she was hearing it from everybody. The person who felt like they had no friends? The person they were envying was saying the exact same thing. Everyone was looking around thinking everyone else had it figured out, and nobody did. If no one initiates because everyone’s waiting for someone else to go first, then nobody’s going first. We just all sit there feeling lonely together.

Suzanne told me about how she used to walk into church events and just sit somewhere and hope someone would talk to her. And then she’d go home and tell her husband, “Nobody talked to me.” And he’d say, “Did you talk to them?” And she’d be like, “Well, no, but they should talk to me because I’m the new person.” I think we’ve all been there. But nobody was making her feel that way. It was all internal.

So here are some of the lies that kept coming up as we talked to people.

Left to right: Suzanne Tuffendsam, Emily Foster, and Laura Clary

“People won’t like me if we make different choices.”

This one is huge, especially for women. There are so many things that can become dividing lines: Do you homeschool? Did you have a home birth or a hospital birth? Are you crunchy or not crunchy? It can go on and on. Guys seem to have an easier time here—they’re like, “We’re both Christians, cool,” and that’s enough. But for a lot of us, the comparison game is relentless.

If you’re someone with strong opinions, that’s fine. But just be careful how you hold those opinions in group settings. You might not realize it, but someone who made a different choice might be hearing your confidence as a judgment on them. And if you’re on the other side—if you tend to feel less-than—understand that a lot of that is coming from inside you, not from the person with the different opinion. We can be friends with people who have made difference choices than us. That’s not a threat. It’s actually a gift.

“Friendship should look like it did in a previous season.”

Many people form deep friendships in college because you’re together 24/7 and you don’t have many responsibilities. Then you graduate, you start over somewhere new, you don’t know anybody. And it takes so much longer to get to know people.

Then you get married and your husband becomes your priority. Then you have little kids and you get together with friends and you can’t string two sentences together because you’re constantly correcting somebody. It’s okay. It’s okay to embrace the fact that life is different now. It’s not going to look exactly like it did, and holding on to that expectation is just setting yourself up for disappointment. If you go in expecting it to feel like college forever, you’re going to be let down. But the friendships you build in these harder seasons? They’re just as real. They just look different.

“My friends have to be in my exact life stage.”

It’s natural to gravitate toward people in the same season. Newlyweds want to hang out with newlyweds, young parents with young parents. There’s nothing wrong with that. But when you narrow your focus to the point where the only people who could possibly be your friends are people doing exactly what you’re doing, you’re cutting yourself off from some of the richest relationships out there.

Suzanne told a story about an older woman at her previous church who became one of her closest friends—someone in her seventies. They showed up one day wearing the same shirt, and Suzanne just loved that. This woman cared for her, prayed for her, showed up for her in quiet, steady ways. Meanwhile, Suzanne had been so focused on trying to break into a specific friend group of people her own age that she almost missed the people God was actually putting in her life. Older friends who’d pull her aside after Bible study and say, “I went through that too. I’m praying for you. Can I bring you a meal?”

And younger friends bring something too. They’re not as jaded. They see things with a freshness that can challenge your cynicism. Suzanne said being around younger people reminded her how her own kids might be experiencing the world, and she could ask them questions that actually helped her parenting. The point is: a spectrum of ages in your friendships is not a consolation prize. It’s a gift.

“Friendship should just happen naturally.”

This might be the most common lie, and it creates a vicious cycle. You show up somewhere, nobody talks to you (or you don’t talk to anybody), you go home feeling bad, and then you don’t want to come to the next thing. And it just gets worse. Research out of the University of Kansas found that it takes about three years of consistent engagement to develop what you’d consider a good friendship, and about seven years for someone you’d call a lifelong friend. That’s a long time. Especially when you have little kids and being consistent feels almost impossible.

When my husband Michael and I first got married, there was this group of couples at our church that we really wanted to be friends with. We kept trying to get ourselves invited to stuff, and it just wasn’t happening. And then one Sunday there was this new couple, and we just said, “Hey, you wanna grab lunch?” And they said “yes!”. We ended up spending the whole day together—like eight hours. And from that one invitation, we ended up with a mid sized friend group that would hang out every Sunday from after church till late in the evening. But none of that would have happened if we had just kept wishing the other group would invite us. We had to put in the effort with someone new.

Friendship requires effort. It requires humility. It requires being willing to feel a little awkward. And even then, it’s not always going to be a love connection at first. But you show up, you try, and you trust that God is working in it. Even the idea of a “best friend” can be kind of an unrealistic expectation. God uses all kinds of different people for different things in your life, and I think we’d be a lot happier if we were just thankful for that instead of holding out for one perfect person.

“I don’t have time or energy for friends right now.”

I think a lot of people would honestly say this is true of them. And your capacity might be limited—maybe you don’t have transportation, or you’ve got a bunch of little ones at home, or you’re just exhausted. I get that. But limited capacity is not the same as no capacity. You might need to get creative, but you’re going to really regret it if you just don’t have any people in your world.

For Suzanne, COVID exposed a lot of relational problems in church. People left. Relationships were lost. And she got to a place where she was like, “People are just so much work.” She knew it wasn’t right, but that’s where she was. And then she was reading Paul’s letters and came across the part where he says he’s been “spent” for the people he serves, and he’s glad for it. And she said that just wrecked her. Because we should be willing to be spent for each other. That’s what we’re called to.

If you would honestly say you don’t have time or energy for friends, I’d gently ask: where are you with the Lord right now? What’s going on in your heart? Because I think a lot of times, that statement is covering something deeper. You might be hiding. You might be depressed. You might be protecting yourself from being hurt again. And I get all of that. But I’d encourage you to not stay there.

How to Be a Good Friend

Initiate

Here’s something that really reframed things for me: the Bible doesn’t command us to be loved. It commands us to love. That’s a big difference. I can’t make people love me—God doesn’t command that of me. But He does command me to love other people. So instead of sitting around wishing someone would reach out, just reach out. Text someone. Walk up to someone on Sunday. Say, “Hey, how can I be praying for you this week?” Set up a monthly lunch. If you make the decision once—like, the first Friday of every month we’re getting together—it takes the pressure off of having to remake that decision every time.

And if you’re new somewhere, just remember: most of the people around you probably feel new too. The person you’re hoping will come talk to you? They might be hoping the exact same thing about you. A friend of ours, Lily, is great at this. She’ll just text out of nowhere: “Yo, I’m thinking about you.” And it always seems to come on the hardest days. That kind of thing costs almost nothing and can completely change someone’s day.

Don’t Keep Score

In your marriage or your friendships—don’t keep score. Who texted last? Who initiated last? Who seems to care more? That kind of thinking will poison everything. People have different capacities and different communication styles, and somebody not texting you back right away doesn’t mean they don’t care. I’m terrible at responding to texts. It takes me three days sometimes, or I just completely forget. It doesn’t mean I don’t love the person. I got distracted. I struggle with making decisions. If you’re asking me for a decision over text, that’s especially hard for me. So just—give people grace.

Don’t Be Quick to Take Offense

Oh man, this one. I had a text exchange with someone recently that went completely off the rails. My intention was to encourage this person—like, “Hey, way to go, look at this great thing.” And they took it as me giving them rules. Like I was telling them what to do. They were hurt and offended, and I’m sitting there thinking, can you go back and read those messages in the spirit I intended them? It’s so easy to assume the worst over text. A missing exclamation point suddenly means they’re mad at you. No punctuation at all? They must be furious.

First Corinthians 13 says love “believes all things.” That means believing people are saying what they mean, not looking for the hidden insult. If you have low self-esteem, everything can be filtered through the lens of “people are annoyed by me, I’m a burden.” But that’s not fair to the people around you. An older woman at Suzanne’s previous church told her once: “Don’t worry about what people are thinking, because they’re not.” And honestly, that’s gotten me through some hard times too. Most people are way too busy thinking about themselves to be scrutinizing you.

Laura and some friends at our church’s women’s retreat

Point Them Back to Jesus

This is what you want your friends to do for you, and it’s what you should be doing for them. When someone comes to you with all their problems, you don’t just want to be like, “Yeah, that’s terrible.” You want to know your Bible well enough to point out the lies they’re believing, encourage them with truth, and pray for them. You don’t want to be a friend the way the world does friendship. And that means pointing out sin when it’s appropriate, too. Not in a harsh way, but in a “I love you too much to let you stay here” way. That’s what real friendship looks like.

Be Vulnerable

If you want your friendships to go deeper, someone has to go first. Someone has to be the one who gets honest in the small group. Someone has to cry. And it might need to be you. Suzanne said she doesn’t really have a choice—she’s just that person. First day of any group, she’s crying and sharing things. Has she been burned by it? Yes. Has she shared too much at times? Definitely. But way more often, people come up afterward and say, “Thank you for being honest about that. I feel the same way.”

You can be wise about it. You don’t have to share everything with everyone. There’s a time and a place. But don’t let the fear of being burned keep you locked in surface-level relationships forever. The risk is worth it. And confessing your own sin goes hand in hand with this. When you’re honest about your own failures, it gives other people permission to be honest about theirs.

Ask for Feedback and Accountability

This is scary, but it might be the most important thing on this list. If there’s an area you’re insecure about, ask someone you trust: “Is this actually true of me?” A lot of times, what’s been tormenting you turns out to be a lie, and just hearing someone say “No, that’s not you at all” can be incredibly freeing. But sometimes there is something. There might be a blind spot, a habit, something you do that puts people off without you realizing it. Wouldn’t you rather know?

My husband Michael talks about how when he was a student leader in college, the staff sat him down and told him he wasn’t being chosen for a leadership position because he had a pride problem. That was devastating at the time. But years later, he tracked those people down to thank them. They loved him enough to say the hard thing, and it changed his life. Proverbs says the wounds of a friend are faithful. When someone who loves you tells you something hard, receive it. It might hurt for a while. But it’s one of the greatest gifts a friend can give.

Ask Questions

Don’t talk about yourself all the time. I know, that sounds obvious. But Suzanne told a story about realizing one day that she had a really close friend and she didn’t even know the woman’s favorite color or what she’d gone to school for. Because Suzanne had been doing all the talking. When she gets nervous, she just talks. And she’d give someone a second to respond, and if they hesitated, she’d fill the silence with more of herself. She said it’s embarrassing to think back on, but it wasn’t really caring. She had to learn to slow down and be genuinely interested.

Some people were raised in families where asking questions felt nosy. Michael’s mom is like that—in her mind, if you want her to know something, you’ll tell her. And we’re over here thinking, “If you loved us, you’d ask.” We’re all coming from different places. But here’s a practical tip that was actually life-changing for someone I shared it with years ago: when you’re talking to someone, try to ask at least three questions about them. That’s it. Three questions. It sounds small, but it forces you out of just talking about yourself, and people notice. They feel cared for. And that’s a huge part of what love looks like.

Pray for Them

When your friend is going through something hard, you can be there and they can cry on your shoulder, but you can’t really fix it. Taking their needs before the Father is the biggest gift you can give them. And I know prayer can feel like a small thing. People have even said to me, “All you did was pray?” But I’ve seen prayer work too many times to think that.

When Suzanne first came to our church, she was pregnant and the doctor told her she was going to lose the baby. That little girl turned eleven this year. I’ve had moments too—where I’ve been really upset about something, texted a few friends to pray, and the shift in my heart was almost immediate. I could feel it. So pray. Pray for your friends. It’s a bigger deal than we realize.

Examining Ourselves

Check Your Expectations

A lot of the pain we experience in friendship comes down to expectations we didn’t even know we had. It’s the same as marriage—you don’t know what your expectations are until somebody isn’t meeting them. You might be carrying around this unspoken idea that your friend should text back within an hour, or that your spouses should all be best friends, or that you should be getting together weekly. And then when it doesn’t happen, you’re hurt, and you don’t even really know why.

But here’s what I learned. Much of the time when I’d get hurt in a friendship, it turned out to be my own issue—I’d said yes to something I should have said no to, or I had an expectation I’d never communicated and then I was resentful when it wasn’t met. We don’t even voice some of these expectations because deep down we know they’re kind of unreasonable. I don’t respond to every text, but when somebody doesn’t respond to me? Clearly they hate me. We have to check ourselves on this stuff.

Deal with Your Past Hurts

If you’ve lived on this planet, you’ve been hurt by friendship. I think friendship hurts are actually unique—they cut in a different way than romantic heartbreak. Because with a romantic relationship, okay, the attraction faded or it didn’t work out. But when a friend rejects you, it hits at something deeper: you don’t even want to be around me? Suzanne talked about a childhood best friend who lived across the street and one day just called her up and said, “I don’t care. I don’t want to be friends with you anymore.” She said that rocked her world. And those kinds of wounds get carried into every new relationship if they’re not dealt with.

You start seeing rejection where there isn’t any. You pull back before anyone can get close enough to hurt you again. You treat every new friend like they’re the person who wounded you. Recognizing those patterns and asking the Lord for healing is so important. You’re not a victim forever. The hard things you’ve been through have shaped you, but they don’t have to define you. And you don’t want to be eighty years old still blaming your current relationships on something that happened decades ago. Ask God to heal you from whatever makes you insecure, whatever makes you afraid to let people in.

Be Willing to Do the Work

If you consistently struggle to make or keep friends, at some point it’s worth asking someone who loves you: is there something I’m not seeing? There might be nothing. But there might be something—a way you come across, a habit you don’t realize you have. And when someone does tell you something hard, try not to get defensive right away. Ask yourself: am I offended because what they said is wrong, or am I offended because it hurts because they’re right? We’re all blinded to our own faults. Being willing to hear hard things and actually do the work to grow—that’s what maturity looks like. And it’s one of the most hopeful things you can do for your future friendships.

Conclusion

If you feel lonely, here’s my first piece of advice: sign up to do something. Join a small group. Go to the next church event. Volunteer to serve somewhere. I know some people are like, “I hate small talk, I hate initiating, it makes me die inside.” I get it. But you have to find ways to connect, and sometimes that means doing stuff that feels uncomfortable.

And here’s the thing about showing up to the same things over and over: you need that repetition. You have to keep talking to the same people. Some folks will say, “I always just talk to the same people at these things,” like that’s a problem. But that repetition is exactly how friendships are built. You keep showing up, you keep having conversations, and over time, depth comes.

One really practical tip that’s been a game changer for me: when you want to get together with someone, text them with your calendar open. Don’t say, “We should hang out sometime.” That’s never going to happen. Say, “Are you free Friday?” If they’re not, say, “What about the following Tuesday?” Set it up right there. It sounds so simple, but it makes all the difference. The gap between wanting to be friends with someone and actually being friends with them is usually just the willingness to schedule the next step.

God Provides

C. S. Lewis wrote something in The Four Loves that Suzanne found while we were preparing for this talk, and it’s stuck with me. He said that in friendship, we think we’ve chosen our peers. But for a Christian, there are no chances—a “secret master of ceremonies” has been at work. Christ, who told his disciples “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can say the same to every group of Christian friends: “You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.”

I love that. Because it means the friendships in your life right now—messy, inconvenient, not what you imagined—they’re not accidents. God has placed specific people in your path for specific reasons. He’s been faithful to provide friends in my life, even when I couldn’t see it at the time. Looking back, I can see why certain people were there in certain seasons, and why some friendships didn’t work out. And I’m grateful.

So take the risk. Send the text. Ask the awkward question. Share the hard thing. Walk up to someone you don’t know and just say hi. It will feel uncomfortable. It will require humility. You might get burned. But on the other side of that discomfort is the kind of friendship that holds you up in your darkest seasons, sharpens you when you’re complacent, and keeps pointing you back to the God who made you to need each other.