“For shelter is gone when the night is o’er,

And bread lasts only a day,

But the touch of the hand and the sound of the voice

Sing on in the soul alway.”

The Human Touch, Spencer Michael Free [i]

I spent my entire childhood in the same school district. I didn’t have to seek friends—they were built in by common bus routes and classroom seating arrangements. I was popular because I had always been there. A staple, like the baking soda in the back of your fridge.

Now I stood in a cold apartment hallway, my baby girl crying on my hip, as I prepared to commit a social breach. In a desperate moment, I knocked on the metal door. Janina, a German national, married to a U.S. Air Force pilot, opened the door and greeted me, a question in her voice.

“I need help,” I choked out the words, embarrassed by the tears I couldn’t contain. Immediately, she brought me into an oasis of understanding as she poured out coffee and listened intently.

I don’t remember what drove me to fall apart on a neighbor’s doormat. Maybe it was raising three children under the age of seven in a 500-square-foot apartment, while watching President Trump taunt the North Korean dictator, “Rocket Man,” who lived uncomfortably close to our current duty station in Kunsan, South Korea. Gas masks issued to us, “in case of emergency,” sat next to craft supplies in our hall closet. My extended family was facing losses an ocean away. My baby was sick. Korean hospitals were different. Pressures and loneliness swelled larger each day.

Through a bittersweet revelation, I learned Janina was also in need of community. Facing the fog of that year, we linked arms and navigated the waters of culture shock wrought by a foreign country and a military lifestyle.

Friendships through the years pulled me further from the traditions of my childhood. No longer served to me on a silver platter, they blossomed through the hard ground of adversity and isolation. By the time I met Janina, I had stood on other doorsteps, navigated other crowds, and climbed into other cars full of military wives, all in the pursuit of knowing and being known. I had to reach out in ways that exacerbated my fears. I had to humble myself, expose some weakness, before a remedy would present itself.

And I had to learn that sometimes those with the roughest exteriors carried the smoothest balms my soul needed. Inevitably, that was the person who would loudly knock on their front window when I walked past their house, drive me to Japanese language lessons, or drop an expletive just to see my reaction. The gentler women would leave chocolates on my doorstep, bring a bouquet of hydrangeas, or sing “Happy Birthday” to me loud and unashamed from the road as I stood in my doorway, exhausted, sick, and quarantined. The sugar and the spice worked together to create something rich and complex.

Often, a neighbor instinctively “knew” I needed something. Like the time I slogged across my threshold, bemoaning the day’s frustrations. Within moments, my neighbor, Jill, knocked on my door, a book in her hand. “I always loved reading this to my kids and thought you might like it.” I chuckled wryly at the title, “It Could Have Been Worse.” The story depicted a mouse whose journey was fraught with accidents. As he lamented his misfortune, he remained unaware that all these minor mishaps were providentially rescuing him from the jaws of a predator. An eternal message pushing through a children’s storybook.

As we traverse seasons that highlight loneliness, I hope we will find or create those unlikely, life-giving friendships. If you feel you are “going out on a limb,” remember that loneliness itself is already a brittle branch. Knocking on a door, sending a text, asking for help, is the surest way to make our way back towards solid ground.

[i] Bennett, William J. The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories. Simon and Schuster, 1993.

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