What Maria Taught Me

Mar 2011 Issue

by Annette Lyon
When I got my new visiting teaching route that year, I didn’t recognize the name of my companion: Maria. But I worked with the young women—of course I didn’t know a lot of the sisters in the ward. A quick glance at the ward directory told me where she lived. We made our first appointments over the phone.
When I met her, I wondered if we’d get along; we seemed so different from one another. As it turned out, we were.

But Maria also turned out to be one of the greatest blessings I’ve ever received from visiting teaching.
Prior to this, my experience with visiting had been somewhat lukewarm. I needed just one finger to count how many regular visiting teachers I’d ever had, and that one had been in college. I stopped expecting to be visited, and I went forward doing my monthly duty to visit the sisters I was assigned to, but not feeling particularly motivated by it.

Maria and I were companions for over six years, something I see now as strikingly unusual. During that time, I honestly don’t know that we made much of an impact on the sisters we visited, although we tried.
One sister didn’t seem to care whether we showed up and even seemed annoyed if we stayed longer than twenty minutes. Another seemed to enjoy chatting, but she didn’t seem to need us either. The list went on.

So I could look at those years and think they were dismal failures—our messages might or might not have made anyone’s day brighter; we might or might not have ever lifted a burden. I’d like to think otherwise, but I’ll never know.

What I do know is that Maria changed me.

Turns out I was her first visiting teaching companion—ever. She used to work full time, and she gently told her Relief Society presidencies in the past that any free time she had needed to be with her then two children, which meant that if they assigned her a route, it simply wouldn’t get done. She knew that in advance and didn’t accept the calling. Eventually the time came when she quit her job to be a stay-at-home mom. She promptly went to the Relief Society president and said that now she could serve as a visiting teacher, and we were paired up.

The first lesson I learned from Maria was that if you are going to make a commitment, stick to it. She knew before that she couldn’t adequately fulfill the calling as a visiting teacher, and she told people so instead of just giving a report of zero each month. She refused to set up herself—and the potential sisters she could have visited—for disappointment and failure, of making a commitment and not following through.

At the same time, she wasn’t one to shirk the job when she was capable of doing it. The moment she quit her job, she accepted the call. All these years later, I can honestly say she was one of the most faithful visiting teachers I have ever seen.

Maria taught me that family really does come first. She also taught me to take my commitments seriously. If people are counting me, I need to follow through.

Some of the most powerful lessons I learned from Maria came while watching her make the transition from working mom to stay-at-home mom. She shared the surprise—and slight horror—of realizing she’d spoiled her older kids with treats as a way to assuage her guilt for not being home with them all the time. She had to undo that lesson and give them new expectations. I realized that a parent’s small actions, over time, create strong lessons—for better or worse. I also realized that the quicker I change my behavior, the less likely the unwanted lesson will stick.

Maria had two babies during our companionship. For the first time ever, she watched children take their first steps, say their first words. Those things had happened at Grandma’s house before while Mom was at work. She talked about spending hours just watching her one-year-old play and how fascinating and beautiful it was. It was a reminder for me to enjoy the small things I was taking for granted with my little ones.

As we spent more and more time together over the years, I realized that we were indeed kindred spirits,
Maria and I. We discovered commonalities buried beneath the surface and sometimes reveled in our differences. We laughed together. We shared our troubles.

Looking at one another from the outside, neither of us would have sought the other out as a friend. I doubt we’d ever have become friends from sitting by one another in Relief Society or even talking during a weekday activity. It took something far more close—visiting teaching together for years—to find this gem of a woman who became a true friend.

To this day, I don’t recall all the sisters we visited over those six years. But I do remember our conversations, the lessons about motherhood she taught me, her amazing strength and commitment.

I had no idea a program designed to help those being visited would benefit me in such powerful ways when I was the one doing the visiting, Maria at my side.