How To Have Healthy FriendshipsChikamu

“What do I do now?” I asked my friend through tears. 

“Right now, we just sit in this, and let it be hard,” she said through tears. “We make space for it just to be hard.” 

I didn’t think just sitting in the grief was the next step to take. The kind of step where you just stay put. And let the tears fall. And feel all of the feels. All of the pain. All of the sadness. But she gave me the permission to not have to move. I called her and shared what felt like the hardest thing, and she let me just cry. 

She wasn’t afraid of my sadness. Of my grief. Of my tears. She actually held space for my pain. And she joined me there, with her own tears. Sometimes friendship tastes like salty drops of water coming down your own face on behalf of another’s pain. 

That day, I remembered that good friends make space for tears. Good friends don’t try to fix you when you don’t want to be fixed. They don’t rush you through the tunnel of emotions you must travel through to get to the other side. They let you move through them at your own pace, and they hold your hand as you walk.

There have been friends who have dropped what they are doing to come hug me and cry, like when we found out my son had Crohn’s Disease. I have had friends, too far away to travel, FaceTime me and let me cry. Other friends have come and cried on my couch and let me hug them in their pain.

Good friends allow all the emotions. They sit with you in the dark. They let you be. In today’s Scripture, the writer tells us God does the same. He sees our tears, keeps track of them even! He doesn’t turn his face away or prod us to get ourselves together. He has recorded our pain, our fears, our grief, our sadness, and our anxieties. He writes them down and is with us in them. And when we have the chance to be with someone in their tears, we are the hands and feet of Jesus to another. We participate in the ministry of healing and of being an ambassador on behalf of our King to another. 

Don’t miss those sweet times. Be ready. Be available. Be willing. And also be ready to allow others into your pain. A friend is an extension of God himself to us. Let’s participate in this beautiful gift. 

Today, thank God for the friends who have sat with you and made space for your pain. What a gift. Ask God to show you when and how to make space for your friends’ tears.