We’re thinking about caring for people who are walking through pain and suffering, acknowledging that it may be awkward, and that sometimes helping hurts.
In Part 1, we talked about the healing power of presence, that there is an almost mystical power in listening, that attention is the most basic form of love.
In Part 2, culled from watching others do it in the way I wish I could, here are some best practices of care, set out in linked pairs of do’s and don’ts.
As we said in Part 1, caring well is a lot more about how you do it than what you do. If love covers a multitude of sins, then compassion compensates for our other clumsy steps in care. Anytime we are talking about the way of following Jesus, I’m hesitant to a provide a list of rules.
I’m hesitant to list them this way for more than a few reasons. Primarily, because there are no simple steps or quick fixes to pain. Grief is something that must be named and worked through to be healed.
And healing not a given. Suffering is a given. Time passing is a given. But the adage “time heals all wounds” is not even half-true.
Given enough time, open wounds become scars. The memory of the searing loss is still present, but it no longer hurts to run your finger across it. But, a return to health; growth and recovery; true healing – these are optional.
I remember one time attending a grief group for parents who had lost children and overhearing one mother, so gently, tell another, “There will come a day where you don’t always feel like you do now.”
Very few could get away with saying something like that (see Part 1) but the way it was said was so tender and full of compassion. The mother told me later those words became a rope that she held onto in the days and months ahead – some hope.
Life will never be the same. It’s hard to imagine ever laughing again or that laughter would ever feel appropriate. But the promise from someone who’d been there – that the intensity would lessen over time – had been a healing balm.
If we don’t tend to our grief, sooner or later it will have its way with us. If we don’t give ourselves space to grieve, lament, and mourn, grief may lie dormant for a number of years. But like mold in the walls, you can’t hide from what’s hiding in you.
This essay is not about the grieving process. It’s about coming alongside people at or near the beginning of that process.
We live by grace. That’s what we need to get through each day and that’s what God promises to provide us – grace that is sufficient for today’s burdens and cares. I can’t solve tomorrow’s problems with today’s grace. But I sure need grace today to handle the cares of this day.
And yet it is also true that God’s grace, like God’s kingdom, has an agenda, a way. And the Jesus Way trains us, as the Bible puts it, to say yes to some things and no to others (Titus 2:12). When it comes to caring for those in pain, knowing what not to do might be even more important.
- Don’t Avoid / Do Show Up
Have you noticed (or perhaps experienced) the tendency to withdraw from people who are in the midst of extreme suffering? Following his wife’s death, CS Lewis noticed that most people avoided him.
“An odd byproduct of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, in the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not…Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers.”
We don’t know what to say so we end up saying nothing at all, which can cause even more pain. When we’re so cautious about saying the wrong thing that we avoid those in pain, we add the pain of rejection to the pain they’re already experiencing. We tell ourselves that they need space and that we have no words.
And while it’s true that even the wisest and most eloquent words have their limits, just a small touch – letting them know you see them – can go a long way. A recognition.
Witnessing the grief of others is uncomfortable. It reminds us, beneath our conscious awareness, of whatever griefs lie unmined beneath the surface of our lives.
Avoiding people in pain has more to do with avoiding that pain in ourselves.
Sometimes it looks like not showing up, not making that awkward phone call of consolation. Sometimes it looks like not talking about what we both know is just beneath the surface. We tell ourselves that we don’t want to add to the pain by “bringing it up.” But most people appreciate the acknowledgement.
Two recent stories. In the first, I overheard a couple asking a very busy caretaker whose life had been upturned by her husband’s recent stroke, “How are you doing?”
That’s a delicate question that we’ll get to. But the wife finally let herself break down in her tears and say out loud, “I don’t know.”
Tears are healing. Tears are pain and stress leaving the body. Literally, there are stress hormones in our tears. So stepping into that awkward space, choosing not to avoid, created a refuge.
In the second story, I met a man whose last name sounded familiar because it was the same last name as a high school student whose tragic death was memorialized at a local soccer field. The sign was dated decades ago. “Is that your daughter?”
After he shared the part of the story that he felt comfortable sharing, I apologized for touching a wound. He said, “Not at all. I appreciate your asking. It allows me to talk about my daughter which I long to do any time I can.”
The myriad ways that grief and depression affect us is still a mystery, but one thing we are learning is that some depression is circumstantial. Sometimes we are sad because we should be sad. Something would be wrong with us if we were not depressed. We may need a professional counselor to get through our grief. But we also need our friends to show up and sit beside us.
Have you considered that one reason for the increased need for counseling among us is the decline of true friendship between us? CS Lewis made a distinction between acquaintances and friends. He suggested that what most of us call friends are actually closer to acquaintances. What’s the difference? Acquaintances say, “Let me know if you need anything,” and they mean it. But friends show up. And friends keep showing up, long after the slew of calls have stopped and the cards have ceased. They just keep showing up.
Some days we might say, “Not today.” Some days we might even lash out – which is a strange demonstration of trust. No matter. They’ll be back.
When I was in graduate school, training to be a pastor, one of the professors was an expert in the theology of Jonathan Edwards. You might know that Edwards had a very high view of the sovereignty of God – God’s inscrutable control over every event that comes to pass. Years earlier, this professor’s little girl had been in a tragic accident while riding her bike.
What does one say to a grieving father, who is a world-class theologian, with the theology of Jonathan Edwards filling his head?
The story was told that in the months after the accident, another professor came to his house most every day. They barely spoke, if at all. He was just in the house with his friend. The father couldn’t speak. His grief was too dark. But he said it helped him to have his friend under the same roof, even in another room.
The renowned Christian author Parker Palmer has said that at the very height of his own depression, when he had lost his will to live, a friend of his would come to his house, sit in front of him, remove Parker’s shoes and socks, and just rub his feet. Only occasionally made eye contact. Rarely said a word.
Don’t avoid; Do show up. Keep showing up. Keep letting them know “I see you. I love you. I’m here when you call.”
- Don’t Assume You Understand / Do Strive for Compassion
Don’t assume that you know or understand what the other person is going through. Even if you too had a miscarriage. Even if you also had cancer (even the same type of cancer!). Even if you had a car accident on the exact same stretch of road.
To be sure, there is a sense of connection important in shared experiences. That’s one reason people join support groups. Grief can be so isolating. It’s consoling to know that we are not alone. And there are tactful ways to let someone know you share a common ground.
But as a rule, let them ask as opposed to volunteering, “Well, when I…”
Even when your intentions are to help, it can come across as diminishing the urgency and anguish of their present experience. You are talking about what you went through (in the past) instead of acknowledging where they are in the present. Not to mention, they’ve opened their heart and somehow we’ve found a way to make this about ourselves.
Years ago a counselor shared an image with me. Some people are styrofoam cups, and some people are champagne flutes. And they hit the same brick wall.
One bounces off; the other is shattered.
Two people can go through what seems like the same experience. One thinks to himself, “I went through that, and I bounced back.”
First of all, “bouncing” is not necessarily a good thing. To be sure there is a Biblical precedent for suffering in such a way that shows the watching world our faith (1 Pet. 4:12ff). But aiming for that easily gets distorted into short-circuiting the grieving process, bypassing lament, trying to rush through grief.
It’s a pet peeve of mine that often we ask about someone who’s been grieving a loss, especially in the church, “How is so-and-so doing?”
It’s not the question so much, which is most likely a sincere gesture of care. It’s the often-unspoken assumption behind it, that if we don’t answer “Good” or “Doing Better,” that if the person remains distraught or inconsolable that this somehow reveals a deficit in their faith.
As if we need to rip all those psalms of lament and complaint out of the Bible. As if great faith only looks like bouncing back with buoyant confidence. But if the Bible is our guide, it may require more faith to pour out our heart’s true feelings, especially when we may be embarrassed or uncomfortable with those feelings, like anger or sadness or doubt or fear.
Eloquent spiritual words may reflect something terribly unhealthy, an inability to feel or access your grief, honed by decades of learning to suppress your own emotions – a problem far too familiar in the American evangelical church.
Second, we never know the things that other people carry. Their whole story, and all that came before this, impacts how they are experiencing their present difficulties. What you bounced back from in a matter of weeks may crush them for years, or vice versa. The same event can affect two people in very different ways. And an attempt at building a bridge – I understand! I went through something very similar! – can keep us in our shell of isolation and mistrust.
Don’t assume you know. Don’t’ assume you understand. And for heaven’s sake, please don’t say, “I understand exactly what you’re going through.” That’s not possible. And if you can imagine something of it, most likely you don’t need to say it.
I have a dear friend who lost a child. Everyone in the community knew it. A few years later some other parents in that same community also lost a child. My friend and his wife just showed up at their door. They didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to. They just held another and wept. Don’t assume you understand.
But do strive for compassion. Hebrews 13:3 reads, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them” (ESV). I like the JB Phillips translation, “Think too of all who suffer as if you shared their pain.”
You don’t have to have been in prison to sympathize with those who are in prison. You may not have had the same experience, but you can still strive to enter into the experience of another.
More important than assuming we understand is doing the hard imaginative work of what a day in their shoes must feel like.
That’s what the word compassion literally means: compassion is to suffer (passion) with (com). Compassion means to suffer alongside.
Oftentimes instead of compassion we feel pity. We feel sorry for someone who’s going through something hard. But feeling sorry for someone is placing yourself apart from or above them. That’s not compassion. Compassion is shared humanity.
It comes across in our tone; it reaches out from inside us and is written on our face. We don’t have to say that we understand; our sympathy is felt.
In The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen wrote, “Compassion is the core element in caregiving.” We, the wounded, who’ve been cared for by Jesus, now come alongside to care for our fellow wounded in Jesus’ name. Nouwen said it is only through compassion that a bridge of care can be built.
Whatever story we hear, a part of us can relate. It’s our awareness of our own darkness that allows us to be present to the pain and darkness of others.
I mentioned my mentor chaplain Sister Joan in Part 1. She commented that most pastors enter hospital rooms “like undertakers.”
Apologies to my friends in the funeral business, but we get her point. It’s become a professional exchange. Not saying it’s insincere, but Sister Joan was trying to impress upon me that compassion costs the one who extends it. This is hard, imaginative work. This kind of compassion is rare in the church, but it’s the basis of all ministry.
- Don’t Offer Platitudes / Do Offer Comfort
We saw that Proverbs warns about singing songs to a heavy heart (Prov. 25:20). Some of these songs are platitudes.
Platitudes can be true statements (or half-true, or part-true) that diminish the pain of another person’s experience:
Everything happens for a reason.
Things will get better.
Everything’s going to be OK.
You’ll get over this.
You’ve got this.
It’s all for the best.
God has a plan.
He’s in a better place.
At least …
It’s not so bad…It could be worse…
Look on the bright side.
In Genesis 50, at the end of his own story, Joseph was able to say to his brothers, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20).
We can forget that it took Joseph almost two decades of inexplicable suffering, alternating seasons of cold and heat to break open his heart, to come to this understanding. And can you imagine how differently it would have landed if someone else had said to Jospeh, years earlier, perhaps in Potiphar’s jail, “Take heart. God intends this for good”?
It would have been just as true, but it would have been horribly insensitive. Platitudes are what we say to others in the middle of their story that we hope might prove true by the end.
Platitudes can’t abide raw emotion.
We need to be comfortable, as caregivers and friends, with others saying things like ‘God has forsaken me’ (Psalm 22:1), even when a part of us knows that God has promised never to leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5). The Bible gives us permission to voice our heart’s cry, in the moment, even when it’s at odds with what we know to be true (Psalm 44:24).
Spiritual platitudes make the sufferer feel even worse. “On top of all this, I’m not even passing the test of being faithful!”
A Special Word about “How Are You Doing?”
This is such a common question that we need to take it up. It all depends on who says it and how it is said. “How do you think I’m doing!?!”
Same with “How are you doing, really?” You better know someone awfully well and be deeply acquainted with your own pain to ask that question in way that doesn’t make the other person want to sock you in the jaw.
It’s become a common shorthand for bypassing social niceties, like “I know what you’re supposed to say. But how are you doing…really?” It’s a push for intimacy.
But that kind of intimacy should rarely be pushed or presumed upon. It occurs to me that those with the relational capital to ask such a question rarely would. They wouldn’t have to.
Try replacing “How are you doing? with “How are you feeling?” Even better, “How are you feeling today?” And, if they dare to answer, remember that feelings are to be validated, not corrected. Don’t try and talk them out of their sadness or anger.
But do offer comfort. One of the greatest passages in the Bible on caring for others in suffering is 2 Corinthians 1. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort” (1:3). What a beautiful way to speak of God. Who is God? He is “the God of all comfort.”
And the verse continues, “who comforts us in all our troubles so that we may be able to comfort those experiencing any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor. 1:4).
Because of the comfort God has given to us in our suffering, we are able to be a conduit of that same kindness to others. When we have experienced God’s care, God’s touch, we want to be a channel of that living water.
Tim Keller pointed out that our comfort can take different forms. In the Gospel of John, when their brother Lazarus dies, Mary and Martha come up to Jesus and say the exact same thing to him at different times. Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died (11:21; 11:32).
When Martha says that to him, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life and whoever believes in me will never die.” To Martha, Jesus offers the ministry of truth, the comfort of truth, the comfort of words. Our extended warnings on this in Part 1 notwithstanding, words of truth can be consoling – the promises of God.
When Mary, on the other hand, says the exact same thing to him, Jesus says nothing. “When Jesus saw her weeping…he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly distressed…and he wept” (11:33,35).
Keller notes that to one sister, Jesus offered the ministry of truth; to the other, the ministry of tears. Why the different forms of comfort? Because Jesus is the perfect counselor, and he knows that what works for one may not be what the other needs.
We’re not perfect counselors, but we have to give what we ourselves have received. The comfort flows out of our weakness, our brokenness, our lived experience of God’s strength being manifest to us at our lowest and weakest points.
We’ve come to experience that, in Jesus’ kingdom, God’s strength interlocks not with human strength and sufficiency but with human weakness and pain.
This was not just the pattern of Christ; it’s the way for those who follow Christ – “the comfort we ourselves have received.”
Worldly comfort runs along familiar tracks. Godly comfort comes by way of paradox: Life comes through death, strength through weakness, comfort through affliction.
As far as comforting others, that’s an invitation to lead with our weaknesses, our failures, our handicaps, our dark past, our stories of regret. Not only are we building a bridge of compassion but offering a path of hope: God can meet you in this place and help, like God did for me.
- Don’t Try to Fix It / Do Bring Soup
A suffering friend is a person to be loved; not a problem to fix.
If you can’t think of anything to say, it’s ok to say, “I can’t think of anything to say. But I want you to know that I love you and I am with you.”
So often we relate to people as if we can fix what’s broken with just the right words, as if their real deficit were one of information. It’s a version of appealing to the law to change the human heart.
It’s like the counseling philosophy from the famous Bob Newhart skit, “Just stop it!” When a patient would confess their besetting issues, Newhart, as therapist, would respond, “Just stop it!”
We might laugh at that until we realize that’s often how we interact with others, as if we can fix them by giving advice, by lecturing, by telling them what to do (or stop doing).
When we do, not only do we belittle the other’s pain, but we show a shocking lack of familiarity with our own hearts. If we can’t fix ourselves, what makes us think we can fix others? If the law doesn’t work to amend our lives, why do we keep turning to forms of the law to amend the lives of others?
But we do this all the time. “Although advice giving is common…it is rare that specific advice will directly benefit any client,” says counselor Irvin Yalom.
He reflects in his book on group therapy that he can gauge how long a group’s been together or how healthy it is by how often they answer one another with advice, which he says is the hallmark of an inexperienced or emotionally stunted group. If you’ve ever been in a church small group, please read this paragraph again.
But do bring soup. When you don’t know what to do or what to say, you can always bring soup.
Make this your default response: food.
I’m serious.
The most common physical symptom of deep grief is low energy. Bringing food helps in such direct, tangible ways.
Bring a meal. If you live in Midwest, bake a casserole. If you’re not much of a chef, do what someone did for us this week, put a Chick-Fil-A gift card in the mail. Or drop off a pizza.
Don’t say, “Let me know if you need anything,” because almost certainly they are not going to ask. They are overwhelmed already.
Take the initiative. Take their kids to school. Pick them up from soccer. Bring them breakfast. Who doesn’t like a sausage biscuit?
Once you know it’s not your job to fix the big holes, you can show up with meat and potatoes.
Want them to feel loved? Want to make their life a little bit easier and their burdens a little bit lighter?
Don’t ask. Do bring soup. Ask them what their food allergies are and show up with food.
One of the amazing things about the story of Elijah is how God cares for Elijah in his depression (and if you think faithful servants of God are immune from mental illness or depression, check out the story in 1 Kings 19). Elijah had lost his will to live (19:4).
What happens next? He lay down and slept under a tree. After letting him sleep, an angel awakened him and said, “Arise and eat” (19:5). “And he looked and behold there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water… and he ate and drank and lay down again” (19:6).
How does God care for his servant? Space to sleep. Food. Drink. Then more space to sleep. Care for the body. Care for the soul.
One friend drove our kids all over town so Morgen and I (who both had Covid) could sleep. The little things mean the most. So here’s a little taxonomy of care:
Don’t avoid/ Do show up
Don’t assume you know/ Do strive for compassion
Don’t offer platitudes / Do offer comfort
Don’t try to fix / Do bring soup
So far this could be a TED talk (though admittedly a little long). Filled with Scripture but perhaps not uniquely Christian. So lastly and most importantly:
- Don’t Try to Be Jesus/ Do Point Them to Jesus
They need healing. But we are not the healer.
They are in deep need. But we are not the one who is most needed.
They need soul care. But we are not the great physician.
They need hope. But we are not the light.
The most important lesson of care is “You are not the Christ.”
We think we know this, not realizing how deeply we yearn to be a hero, a savior.
It was said of John the Baptist, “He was not the light; he came to bear witness about the light” (1:8). And John himself would later say, “I am not the Christ” (John 3:28).
It was common in those days for slaves to wash the feet of others. So it was a demonstration of his humility when John said he was not worthy even to touch the straps of Jesus’ sandals (1:27).
So, before you tell yourself, I know I’m not the Christ, check yourself. If the man Jesus called “the greatest born among women” (Matt 11) had to check his pride, how much more do we need to be put in our place?
I am not the Christ.
Do you know this?
When that penny drops, it frees us.
We become free to stop trying to change the people closest to us. We are free to accept them the way we ourselves crave to be accepted – as we are, not as we should be.
We can give up our agendas with others.
We can let go.
We can trust.
Instead of advice-giving, we pray.
Instead of fretting and trying to control, we turn to God in prayer.
Not in the fatalistic sense of, “All I can do is pray for you.”
No, the main way we can care for people we care about is to release them into God’s care. And we pray. And we pray. And we keep praying (Luke 18:1ff).
Jesus is a merciful and faithful counselor, who is able to sympathize with us and those we care about, no matter what weakness we carry.
Nothing human is alien to him.
There is one who does understand. Who is always available. Who is always on call. Who always knows how to care perfectly.
And Jesus is a very present help in trouble.
We can sing our song of how Jesus has cared for our wounds and tended to us. We can carry our friends to Jesus in prayer like the paralytic’s friends carried him (Mark 2).
Jesus is the wounded healer who heals us by his wounds.
Jesus understands our misery. His heart toward us is filled with compassion. What makes us want to run away in shame makes Jesus want to draw even nearer.
Let us find our ways to tell others about the heart of Christ, the heart of God.
One seasoned caregiver put it, “I am a conduit of grace. God fills me. And from that place of fullness, I want to come and be a non-anxious presence for others.”
It can flow out of us – the comfort we ourselves have received – so that we become an instrument, a conduit, a channel.
As you seek to care for the people you care about, I hope these resources will be of some benefit to you.