WHAT KIND OF FRIEND ARE YOU IN DISTRESS?

One of your friends gets emotional every time he talks about a deceased parent. 

What do you say to cheer them up?

1) You're lucky. Some people never knew their father. 

2) Don't cry, it will bring another loss into your family.

3) You're not the only one to have lost a parent.

4) I know someone who lost 4 family members in one month. What would you have done in his place?

5) Don't worry, you'll see him again one day in heaven.

6) A man doesn't cry.

7) So, you don't believe what the Bible says?

I've heard a bit of all that, in mourning, in sickness, or let's say it, in depression. Even if their intentions are good, some of these words of ‘consolation’ can sometimes do more harm than good.

While it is true that putting our suffering into perspective by remembering that we are not the only ones to suffer, or that it could be worse, can help us to resist, ‘knowing that the same sufferings are imposed on your brothers in the world’ (1Pet 5:9), trying to console someone by denying their pain, or by presenting it as a weakness or a shame, is not the best thing to do. The pain of an infection on a finger doesn’t go away just because someone else has had a finger amputated. Both have the right to grieve, and to begin a healing process, each in their own context.

When Jesus went to the house of the synagogue leader, where his daughter had just died, a woman with blood loss touched his cloak to receive healing. When he turns around, Jesus doesn't say to her: “How dare you slow me down when I'm going to treat a more serious case than yours? At least you have reached adulthood while the daughter of Jairus is only a child.” No, he did not reproach her, but comforted her: “Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you” (Matt 9:18-22).

Sometimes, with friends in distress, our simple presence, our shoulder on which they can cry, our compassionate silence, our prayers for and with them, are worth more than a thousand words.