Faithful Man: Devotions for Living in Faithless TimesMfano

When You Need to Open Up

When God says, “No,” our hurts may be invisible. We need encouragement, but people can’t encourage us if they don’t know we are hurting. And it can take courage to tell people what’s going on.

When my husband and I suffered a miscarriage, at first I talked openly about it because—well, I had no choice. I was grieving so hard, I couldn’t hide it. And for a while, friends often asked me how I was doing. But as life resumed the appearance of normalcy, I was still mourning, but people stopped asking. They hadn’t forgotten; they weren’t being callous; they just didn’t know if it was okay to bring it up anymore. Would asking me how I was feeling send me into a tailspin? They didn’t know what to do—or what I needed. I was still hurting, still needing to talk, but no one knew it.

Grief is tricky. Grief is unpredictable. Grief looks different on everyone. It can be difficult to know what grieving people—even the people we love most and know best—need. Sometimes people need permission, maybe even an invitation—to support us.

I remembered how Jesus invited friends into His heartache on the night of His arrest. He asked friends to pray with Him, and He shared the severity of His anguish: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me” (Matthew 26:38). Inspired by Jesus’s example, I wrote an email to my closest friends, saying, “I know you are probably afraid to ask me about my miscarriage—you are trying to be sensitive, and I appreciate that so much. But. . . I still need to talk about this. This is me, giving you permission to ask how I’m doing. You won’t make me upset—you’ll give me an opportunity to process, and I still need that opportunity.”

Within minutes, I got back multiple responses—relieved responses, grateful responses. Everyone had been wondering how I was doing, but they’d been unsure if it was okay to ask. Sending this email not only initiated the healing conversations I still needed to have, but it also protected my heart from feeling hurt. 

The enemy loves to whisper doubts that undermine our relationships: Why isn’t anyone asking how I’m doing? Does anyone care? When we share our needs with others, it protects us from harboring secret expectations, and it gets our needs out in the open. It allows us to receive the support we need as we mourn and heal.

I bet you have a person or two who would be honored to keep watch with you. . .to listen. . .to serve. . .to do whatever you need. They just need an invitation. They just need you to open up.