4 Ways to Help Grieving People

As Americans, we don’t feel comfortable around other people’s grief. We don’t know how to act. We don’t have a healthy understanding of grief. Death is a legitimate part of life. We ignore it. We pretend it’s not there. We’ve abstracted it away, and we really don’t know how to deal with it ourselves, let alone help someone else who is grieving a loss. We get really uncomfortable around grieving people because we have no grid for it.

A Brief Look Inside

What are our motivations? We want them to stop hurting. That’s good. But are we wanting that truly for them, or for us, because we feel uncomfortable around their pain? I admit there’ve been times I’ve said something I hoped would cheer them up, so the conversation would get all happy again. It was more about me being uncomfortable around their pain than it was about really caring about them.

We’ve never been taught how to be around people who are grieving. I pray this post gives you a grid for this. We need to learn how to be around other people’s pain. The first step is to understand grief.

We All Need to Grieve Sometimes. It’s OK.

By and large, a lot of stuff happens in this life that we need to grieve. Here’s a brief list:

• Death of a loved one. Even if they’re saved, it’s never easy.
• Abortion. Secular society applauds post-abortives, and the church shames them. Neither allows them to grieve.
• Miscarriage. Never tell someone it was for the best. It wasn’t. They just lost a child.
• Abuse. Never ok, and never the victim’s fault.
• Divorce. Devastating.
• Parent’s divorce. Someone else ripped your foundations apart.
• Children’s divorce. Just as devastating.
• Leave a church. Lots of church hurt out there.
• Loss of relationship. Falling out of relationship with a friend, family member, co-worker, etc.
• Job loss. Can be shattering to identity.
• Change of career. Can be scary.
• Loss of a home. Can be shattering to identity.
• Health trauma. Car accident, military amputee, physical condition or disease, cancer, etc.

I’m sure you can think of more. All of these things represent loss. Anytime there’s a loss in our life, we need to grieve.

What Grief Is

Most of us don’t even know what grief is. Grief is the process of accepting a painful loss. It’s reconciling the painful things that happen in this world with my sense of being ok.

Grief is going through these 5 phases:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

These aren’t numbered because they don’t necessarily go in order. You can be totally fine with the loss one day (acceptance) and overflowing with anger about it the next. And the next day you’re just sad (depression). And they can repeat. You can come out of sadness (depression) only to be really angry about it again.

That’s ok. That’s normal. That’s healthy. It’s healthy to spend seasons in each one of these emotional phases, sometimes multiple times. The trick is not to get stuck permanently in any one phase, except acceptance, where we eventually want to land.

God gives us as much healing as we can stand at a time. We may have made it to acceptance six months ago and think we’re totally done with grieving. But then, Wham!, something triggers strong emotion and all of a sudden God’s taking us through these phases again at a deeper level, to gain a deeper level of healing.

That’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with you.

4 Ways to Help Grieving People

There’s a really good model for helping grieving people in the Bible. Job’s three friends usually get a bad rap, but they actually got it right for a whole week. Then they opened their mouths, and it was all downhill from there (see Job chapters 4-31.)

Look at Job 2:11-13:

When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.

1) Just Be with Them.

Job’s friends totally got this right. They just sat with him in the ashes of his life. Can you bring someone their favorite latte, and just sit with them, drinking it on the porch? Don’t try to say anything. Don’t try to make it better. You can’t. Just be there. They need your presence more than your words.

Please don’t say Christian-quippy things to cheer them up. You know, things like:

• “It was for the best.” No it wasn’t! That’s why I’m grieving.
• “Time heals all wounds.” Thank you Captain Obvious, but now I need to grieve.
• “You’ll get over it.” Thank you for revealing you’re not a safe person for me to grieve around. I’ll make sure I always wear my happy mask around you.

Don’t try to cheer them up. Just your being there will do that, so don’t try to force it. Let them be sad, angry, whatever (obviously as long as they’re not being a danger to themselves or anyone else. In that event, call 911.) Don’t be afraid of their emotions. It’s ok for them display strong emotions.

2) Acknowledge the Pain and Validate their Grief.

It took Job a whole week to feel safe with his friends. When he finally spoke and expressed his grief, he probably wished he’d waited another week. They immediately launched into how all his troubles where really his own fault. Predictably, that did not help the grieving person. Here are some better examples:

“Job, you’ve just lost your family, your career, and all your savings in a few days. It really hurts, doesn’t it?” Phrasing it like a question invites Job to share his pain.

“You’ve experienced tremendous loss, Job. You need to grieve.”

“I’m sorry you’re hurting. You’ve been through a lot. It’s not easy, is it?”

C’mon, Eliphaz, would that have been so hard?

3) Reflect their Feelings Back

“So you feel like God’s abandoned you?” Try to put the person’s feelings into your own words and ask them if you’re understanding correctly. You don’t even have to be right for this to help them tremendously. Just the fact that someone cares enough about them to try to understand is hugely comforting.

Drawing their feelings out in a safe, non-judgmental, environment helps them process. They may not even know what’s going on inside, and articulating it to you helps them get in touch with those feelings, which helps them work through them.

Get out the thesaurus on your phone. “You say you’re feeling sad. Is that like melancholy or more bitter? Do you feel blue or hopeless?” Invite them to drill deeper into how they feel.

4) Pray & Intercede for Them.

Pray with them before you leave, but also pray for them when you’re alone. Our prayers for others are powerful. People can actually feel us praying for them, although they may not realize that’s where the relief they feel is coming from.

Don’t pray that God would take away the pain or rescue them from it. They need to grieve the loss. Instead, pray that God is tangibly with them in it. Pray that he brings them through it. Ask God to give you his heart for them. Ask him how you can show them they’re loved.

Because that’s what grieving people need the most. They need to know they’re loved in the middle of it all.

How about you?

Did someone help you when you were grieving? Did they do something well-meaning but stupid that really didn’t help? What have you learned about helping grieving people that I missed? Tell us your thoughts in the comments. And please share on social media if this would bless someone else.