About a month ago, my dear friend’s husband died. He was chronically ill and had been sick for a long time, but it was still a surprise ... they thought they had years left together. We all did. 

When someone you love and care about is grieving, trying to figure out how best to help them can seem kind of uncomfortable. There seems to be a delicate balance between saying the right thing or the wrong thing, between being there too much or not enough. I don’t want to drive her nuts with questions (she’s probably had to answer “How are you?” a thousand times already today), but I also want to make sure she knows that I care.

I’m grateful that Bekah and I have already established that we are the kind of friends who can talk about the hard stuff in life and who can tell each other what we need (or don’t need) on any given day. I’m grateful that she and I share a sometimes offbeat sense of humor that we both use as a coping mechanism.

As a matter of fact, my dad died not long after we met, and she sent me a card that said, “I’m sorry for your loss … and about all the people who will compare it to the death of their hamster.” It made me laugh on a hard day, and it was then that I knew we were going to get along just fine. (Also, WHY DO PEOPLE DO THAT!?) 

So how do we love someone through loss? I’ve wrestled with that every day since Bekah lost her Joey because I want to love her well. Right now, my plan is to be present, even though we live nearly a thousand miles apart.

I’m simply going to try to be here and say the things - without worrying too much about whether what I say is the wrong thing. If it’s the wrong thing (and sometimes it will be), I’ll apologize, but that’s got to be better than saying nothing at all for fear of getting it wrong...right? 

I’m going to keep saying his name and happily listening to stories about the love of her life. I’ll keep being my awkward self, sending memes and TikToks that I hope will make her laugh on her better days. I’ll keep checking in and trying to find new ways to say, “How are you?” (without always saying “How are you?”).

7 Songs to Help You Through the Storms of Life

And for as much as I do love to try to get my friend to laugh or smile, I also think it’s really important to give the grief space to breathe. This is just my opinion, so take it for what it’s worth, but I don’t think we should try to make everything be okay - because we can’t make it okay anyway. People need to be allowed to be sad.

Grief is messy. This isn’t the time for clichés and platitudes.

As Christians, it’s tempting to want to immediately look for the purpose in the hard things. While I do believe that God can make beauty from the ashes, often that comes with time and perspective. We can’t explain away the pain right now and sometimes it can be hurtful when we try. It’s almost as if we’re telling the griever, “Turn that frown upside down!” when they’re just trying to keep breathing.

The Bible tells us in Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” We also read in the book of John about how Jesus wept when his friend died even though Jesus knew he would be raising Lazarus from the dead.

There is time for the pain. Or, like we learn in Ecclesiastes 3:1-4, there is a season for it:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance.

When the person we love is in a season of weeping and mourning, and I don’t think it’s our place to rush that. We can let the healing come in God’s timing while we mourn together and hold space for those who are hurting.

Bekah never planned on being a widow in her mid-30s, and today things very much do not feel okay. I believe with all my heart and soul that she will be okay and that God has a plan for her future, but right now she’s heartbroken and figuring out what her next steps look like. And I cannot make that better. No matter how many prayers I pray or memes I send, I cannot unbreak her heart.

Again, it’s all a little tough to balance. There’s no recipe for this. What I’ve settled on is that I’m not going away. I’ll do my best and hope it helps in some small way for her to know that she is loved, she is not alone, and she can take all the time she needs.

Sometimes, that’s all we can do.

TobyMac Shares About Hope and Grief