Miserable Comforters

Miserable Comforters

What miserable comforters you are! Won’t you ever stop your flow of foolish words? What have I said that makes you speak so endlessly? –Job 16:2-3

We have a friend who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and in the days following the dreadful diagnosis, many people were anxious to tell her the stories of people they know who have faced breast cancer. There is just one problem—many of the women in the stories died, and the storytellers were so excited to relate to her how happy the cancer victims’ husbands were with their new wives! Gee, thanks so much for telling me!

David and I have a theory about this. We’ve decided that when people hear about the difficulty in your life, their brain, like a computer, goes on a search, looking for a connection. Because they don’t know what else to say and in an effort to fill up the awkward silence, people tend to say the first thing that comes up as a connection. “I knew a family who had this happen . . .” Sometimes it feels like a subtle effort to diminish our suffering, as if because the same or worse has happened to someone else in the world, it shouldn’t hurt us quite so much. I’m not sure why, but people have this tendency to want to compare pain. This is harder than that; that would be worse than this. But you can’t really compare pain. It all just hurts.

People are so quick to tell stories about other people who have faced similar losses. It makes them feel better to suggest a solution, a book, an expert, but it doesn’t always make us feel better, does it? People are hoping to be helpful, trying to let us know that they can relate. If we put ourselves in their shoes, we realize that it is really hard to know what to say to someone who is suffering, isn’t it? So we can be prickly and sensitive about the things people say to us that we wish they hadn’t. Or we can choose to see their brains at work searching for a connection, their hearts wanting to show us they care even though they simply don’t have the words to express it well. Won’t you decide to give people grace and determine not to make the same mistake yourself when you encounter people who are hurting?

My best Comforter, I feel hurt and disappointed by the thoughtless things people have said to me in my pain and by those who have said nothing at all. Will you give me the grace to lower my expectations and let go of my hurt?

DIGGING DEEPER