In our high-powered society, we have retreated from those around us who hurt.
Several years ago, as I was taking the limousine to Hopkins Airport in Cleveland, I chatted with the only other passenger. When I asked why he was traveling, he replied that his business partner had died suddenly and he had come to Ohio for the funeral. Misunderstanding what he said, I smiled politely and commented, “Oh, how nice!”
Immediately, I knew my response had been inappropriate. Embarrassed, I asked, “Pardon me?” When he repeated his answer, I realized how I had misunderstood him, and that my polite reply was a disaster. That brief conversation has haunted me as I have wondered how many “polite” answers I have given to people who were hurting deeply.
In our high-powered society, we have retreated from those around us who hurt. The hurts range from death to depression, from daily trials to serious illness. We have taught ourselves not to get too involved: it is too costly; it takes too much time; it is embarrassing; the risk of failure is too great. As a result, when we want to express care we no longer know how. We have not taken the risk and the time to develop the skills necessary to make our efforts effective. I suspect that almost daily God brings someone to us who needs help in facing a small hurt or a large crisis. We need three skills to be God’s instruments of care: (1) we need to listen; (2) we need to show we understand; and (3) we need to respond.
Listening
The key to good listening is first to stop talking. Eager to relieve another’s pain, we are often quick to pontificate. Consider Job: in despair he cried out to God, “I will give free rein to my complaint and speak out” (Job 10:1, NIV). But to his talkative, accusing friends he said, “If only you would be altogether silent! For you that would be wisdom” (13:5).
In How to Help a Friend, Paul Welter says that “a response no longer than 12 seconds is usually an effective length in a counseling or helping situation.” In 12 seconds, according to Welter, one can say two sentences, or a total of about 25 words. “A consistent response length of over 20–30 seconds presents a major problem.” What we communicate by more lengthy answers, Welter observes, is, “I want to talk to you rather than talk with you.” He also says, “If our responses are long, then the focus is taken off the person we are trying to help and the helping process is slowed down.”
One of the reasons we talk rather than listen is that we do not like to face negative feelings. I don’t feel comfortable when a friend is too depressed to pray. Or when that friend is sure God is irreconcilably angry with him. Or when he says “God doesn’t love me anymore.” Those feelings challenge my faith—and besides, I don’t have easy answers for them.
But if I intend to be biblical, honest, and loving I must listen. I have felt those feelings myself. I have read of them in Scripture. (In Psalm 77, for example, the psalmist admits to all the negative feelings just mentioned.) I must listen because, in his love, God listens. The Bible is bursting with the words of men and women who pour out their hearts before God. God was not embarrassed or put off by what his people said. Not only did he listen, but he allowed words of anguish and despair to be recorded in writing. The reality of God’s love is, in fact, clearer in Scripture because we are also allowed to read of the desperate need men and women have for that love. God forbid that we should try to protect his truth, or ourselves, by not listening to someone in need.
But listening involves more than not talking. We must want to understand what lies beneath the words we hear. Jesus listened for the heart needs of people. When he healed the woman with the flow of blood (Mark 5:25–34), he knew her need was greater than physical healing. Because of her 12 years of hemorrhaging, she had probably been ostracized by her people. Hers was a private problem. By drawing her out and telling her in front of the crowd, “Your faith has made you well,” he restored her not only physically, but socially and spiritually as well.
The heart need is not always the need stated in words. I may say, “I just feel out of sorts today.” “I’m lonely inside.” “I’m doing all that I can think of, yet God seems far away.” So I am greatly helped when someone reaches out and touches my spirit, as Jesus touched the leper, and says to me, “I’m interested in what you’re experiencing. I love you. I want to stand beside you and uphold you.”
Showing Understanding
Besides listening, you need to show that you have heard. Let’s reverse the roles and see what we look for when we seek help from someone else.
Suppose your father has just died, and you are pouring out your feelings to a Christian friend. You tell him that you get mad at your spouse when the slightest thing goes wrong, and at work bristle when anyone disagrees with you. After the initial burst of words and emotion, what response do you want from your friend? Probably you want to know that he is receiving the feelings you are sending. How can he show this? Perhaps by commenting, “I hear you saying you are all torn up inside by this.”
You might then say, “That’s right! Well, I’m sleeping pretty well, I’m not all torn up. But it does pretty well wreck my day and my relations with people.”
Now let’s translate that to the situation where you are listening to someone else’s problem. Having listened, the goal is to show that you have heard what your friend is saving. Often a one-sentence rephrasing is enough. When you do this, it gives him the chance to clarify, or to add more information.
It is the nature of pain, whether emotional or physical, to be ultimately private. This means that no one can fully understand the pain another person experiences. It also means that the person who hurts feels alone. So when we respond to a hurting person, we are communicating, “I want to understand your particular experience. I want to try to share it with you.”
Henri Nouwen, in Out of Solitude, says, “When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.”
Responding
Besides listening and showing we have heard, we can respond in other ways. It may be appropriate, for instance, to ask some questions (taking care not to pummel your friend with them). Ask about the circumstances of the crisis. Or ask if this has ever occurred before. Or ask what he needs from other people. But give him the option not to answer. In fact, give him the option not to receive your help at all. The command of God to bear one another’s burdens is not our license to barrel into the privacy of his personal pain. If you ask about his feelings and he chooses not to tell you, step back, pray, and see if there is some other way to express your love.
He may want your help, however, and still not be able to answer questions. Let us therefore consider some suggestions for responding to a friend in crisis.
Jesus said that we should treat others the way we would like to be treated. While we can never assume that our response to crisis will be the same as our friend’s, we can ask ourselves, “What would I like someone to do for me if I were in the same situation?” For example, when I cry (which I hate to do!) I do not, at first, want someone to touch me or hug me. I want someone to pass the Kleenex. So, if I am with a friend who starts to cry, I tend to get the Kleenex before I offer a hug.
As another example, I know that when I am sick, I am fragile emotionally. Therefore, when I talk with someone who is sick, I try to remember that this person probably needs extra affirmation, even about little things. As we think about how we have been comforted, we echo Paul, who said, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Cor. 1:3–4).
It is sometimes helpful to describe your own feelings about the crisis your friend is facing. I remember telling a friend about an experience I had just had. Her response was, “Oh, it makes me so angry that you had to go through that!” It helped me to hear her say that she was angry, because I could not yet allow myself to be that angry.
If you really do not know how to help your friend, say so: “I’d really like to support you, but I don’t know how. What would be most helpful to you now?” Listen carefully, between the lines, to the answer. It may be, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m just too tired to do the simplest things each day.” Translated to heart-need language, that may be, “I need someone to tell me to go home from work—or to do my breakfast dishes—or to type a letter for me.” Or if the answer is, “It’s just hard to be so weak,” the translation might be, “I need to know if I am doing a good job handling this experience,” or “Please tell me that you like me even when I am going through this difficult time.” Ask if your translation is correct, and then do what you can to meet the need.
But while we need to be ready to act to meet a need, we need even more to be ready to share the sorrow even if we cannot change the situation. Henri Nouwen touches on this when he says, “The basic meaning of care is to grieve, to experience sorrow, to cry out with … we feel uncomfortable with an invitation to enter into someone’s pain before doing something about it” (Out of Solitude). Listening to a friend describe his pain and hearing his heart needs may be the greatest help we can give to him at the time. Never be afraid to listen and to hear just because you cannot do anything to help.
Knowing What Not To Say
We need to consider two common responses—not because they are helpful, but because they almost never communicate the love intended. We have all probably given these responses in one form or another. Generally, we speak with the best intentions. But we see when we look at these responses that they can deflate someone who needs encouragement.
The first such response is, “I know just how you feel.” While this is probably an attempt to communicate understanding, it actually communicates a superficial view of the other person. John Powell observes in The Secret of Staying in Love that if you say this to him, you “anticipate that my reaction was what yours would be in a similar situation, and it never, never is.” Although we all want to know that our experiences are not weird and that they are to some extent shared by others, there are still corners of our heart that only God knows. And for all of us, there are subtleties of feelings that are so personal we would be uncomfortable sharing them. To lose a husband or wife is a common experience, but each person loses something unique, something no one else can fully appreciate. To face the slow death of cancer, or to lose a limb, or to be depressed day after day are all things that many have written about and discussed. But each person who goes through such an experience brings to it individual thoughts, feelings, and reactions.
It would be far better to say to the one who hurts, “I know I can’t really understand all you are going through, but I want you to know I love you, and I want to share your grief as much as I can.”
The second deflating response is: “Oh, but you shouldn’t feel that way! You shouldn’t be down on yourself. [You shouldn’t be angry, or, You shouldn’t be depressed.] God loves you, and you don’t need to feel that way.”
The person with such negative feelings probably knows that they are not God’s ultimate will for him. But to tell him he “shouldn’t feel that way” only adds to the reasons why he does. It becomes one more “bad” thing for him. We can gently remind him that his feelings may be inaccurate, though real, but as we do this we need to communicate that we will stand by him, no matter how negative his feelings.
Listening, showing we hear, and responding all take time and patience and practice. Though I have often failed, I am encouraged that God in his grace can take what is limited and faltering and transform it into a message of his love. Our skill may be fumbling, our questions may be awkward. But if we are willing to take the risk of involvement, and if we are willing to listen to others’ heart needs, then God will graciously allow us to share in the ministry of healing his people.
Alice Fryling is a former member of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s campus staff, and the author of two books published by IV Press. She and her husband live in Madison, Wisconsin, where he directs IVCF’s campus ministries.
