I am a strategizer at heart. I thrive when I am able to receive information, synthesize it, and translate it into a plan of action that is geared towards accomplishing a goal of some sort. This trait makes me thrive in different roles of life, but not always as a friend.
I’ve long confused that to be a good friend, I also have to help the friend move towards a better end-goal. This seems obvious for me to do in circumstances that are more tangible.
For example, is a friend stressed out because she’s overloaded her schedule?
Then, let’s sit down and review together what all she’s committed herself to—and through a series of questions, whittle away at commitments until it’s manageable again.
Or, is someone trying to move to a new city?
Well, I know this person there that has this connection to this type of work you want to do—let me connect you.
It’s hard for me to divorce listening from some action on my part. I often think that if a person is sharing with me, then I should utilize my strategic gifts to leave them better off than when they first shared with me. I hope that it’s beneficial most of the time; some of the time though, I know it’s not. Not everything is a strategy conversation. And if people are willing to share their heart with me, I need to be sensitive to listen and hear beyond their words.
The way of Christian fellowship is empathy, which means we must not assume that everyone around us is fine. In our conversations, we must listen for complaints and cries and help them become laments. In our gathered worship, we must acknowledge the hurting and leave room for struggle and silence. In our counsel, we must pray with and over the hurting.*
Lament is not something I do well, and it’s not something I easily step into with others (at least from the inside). It sometimes seems like wasted energy, unconducive, and honestly—tedious. I personally am one to steel myself up and keep on charging through the difficulty, like a soldier marching on. Yet in the mechanical nature that it bears, I do not also tend to my heart or fully hear the heart of others. Feeling something deeply is not something I am incapable of at the least—but when I do, it often derails me. So I keep the depth of emotion of heart at bay and the strategy of my mind in the forefront, because I think at least that way, some type of forward progress is being made. If I’m fully honest, this mindset has long been coupled with a sense of pride and righteousness in it, wondering why others in their respective struggles won’t handle their life this way too. In a sense, I mentally judge and subtlety impose through my questions, “why aren’t you doing it my way? It obviously works and yours isn’t.”
And like it usually plays out, the one who thinks she has everything to teach finds out she has the most to learn. And those I’ve thought I should teach have become my greatest teachers.
This has been my story over the last year.
This is a season in which so many of those close around me have been going through trials and hardship of different degrees and measure. They lament and share their stories, difficulties, and pain with me. In it, I feel stretched, because my strategizing nature doesn’t have any decent answers for what can make it better. My instinct is either to offer an idea of some kind (which is usually not helpful), or to remain silent and just listen. I mentally detach. I resign myself to the fact that I think I have nothing of value to say that would help them out of their situations. And when they continue to share with me over time, the tension grows—with a narrative in my mind of “why are you sharing this yet again? Don’t you realize I have nothing to say that will help you fix this?”
Yet by the grace of God, He has put me in situation after situation, friendship after friendship in this season with no clear answers or easy fixes. With it has brought the much-needed realizations of the realities that:
- the aim of life is not that everything would be fixed by our own efforts
- I cannot ultimately fix things, and some things cannot be fixed
- I miss the heart of their lament
“To lament is to be utterly honest before a God whom our faith tells us we can trust. Anyone can complain, and practically everyone does. Christians can lament. Biblical lament affirms that suffering is real and spiritually significant, but not hopeless. In his mercy, our God has given us a form of language that bends his ear and pulls his heart… It is one thing to lament in the privacy of our own home or mind, but it takes a different kind of courage and faith to lament with and for another. Michael Card comments, “We’re afraid of other people’s pain. Like Job’s friends, we’re afraid when we don’t have answers. Job doesn’t get any answers for his sufferings, but he gets God.” To enter into someone’s suffering, and to lament with them, is to seek God with them.”*
One good friend in particular is not shy about sharing her heart and her struggles. She has been one of the finest tools to refine how I listen and respond—that it’s often not about providing answers, but for the person to feel seen, heard, and ultimately not alone. To share is to demonstrate vulnerability in hopes one would be readily received just as they are in that moment. It sounds a lot more like:
“I hear you,” “I’m sorry that’s hard,” “That must be frustrating,” “what is God revealing to you in this?” and “how can I pray?”
rather than “why don’t you try this?” “well, you see it this way but it’s probably really like this,” “what are you doing to make it better?”
It sounds a lot more like empathy and looks a lot more like seeking God with them in the midst of their circumstances. To be okay with the not knowing, but willing to enter into their pain.
In seeking God with those people around me, it in turn causes me to also seek God more personally—putting aside my foolish pride that I have it all figured out and instead, looking to Him who is infinitely more wise, more discerning, and more loving than I ever could be. That He may be greater, and I become less—in my heart, mind, word, and deeds. To seek God with those around me is to be fully present with them and ultimately bring them before the feet of our loving Father in compassion and prayer—to bring them before Him who knows their every situation and its outcome full well. It is to remind them of Him who will never leave, forsake, or fail them—something I can never personally promise them as a friend.
And it is good that it is so.
“Feasting and laughter and pleasure are not wrong, but trying to insulate your life with these things is not really life. It’s a bubble. You need to enter the pain of the world around you because the fall is your reality—“death is the destiny of every man.” Take this to heart and you will be wise. Pretend that Christianity is safety from sorrow and you will be a fool."*
I still have much to learn.
*From Journey to the Cross: Readings & Devotions for Lent by Kendal Haug and Will Walker