I received a text from someone the other day. It was a pastor friend who had received some devastating news about a death in the church he and his wife lead. They reached out to a few other friends to ask for advise in how to lead their church, the family closest to the tragedy, and themselves through this. I love the wisdom they have to ask for help. I pulled together some thoughts for them and I thought it might be helpful to share them here too. I am not an expert on grief but I do what it is to grieve and watch how others react around grief and tragedy. Here are a few tips for those of us who are grieving, those of us who are watching others grieve and leaders leading throughout that. It’s worth remembering that we can be all three camps at once!

For the community around those who are most affected by the grief.

• Try not to carry fear personally – its natural when a death or tragic circumstance occurs that we around begin to think about how we would cope if the same thing happened to us. Whilst it is a natural thought process but it can be a dangerous one, because it can allow fear to attach to our lives. When we allow fear to be in control in our decision making we can be sure that we will never choose freedom so we must guard against it and in our community in times of loss and grief. Take time to break off fear and pray for those around you as well. Fear can be a sticky thing and it tends to spread quite easily in a group through moments of loss.
• Try not to be awkward – when someone is walking through pain it leaves the rest of us not knowing what we do. We are scared we will say something silly or insensitive. We worry that about crowding them or not going near them. We aren’t sure if we should text or call. All of that indecision, which comes from a good place, often makes us act awkwardly towards those who are grieving which in turn can make them feel worse. When we were dealing with a loss, I remember people actively crossing the street when they saw me coming because they didn’t know what to say. Now with hindsight I get it and I would have been one of those people in the past too, but I think we can see what that could communicate. Let’s lean in and treat them in the way we would have always treated them, with sensitivity of course but as normally as possible.
• Try not to fix it – when we do lean in let’s not try to fix their pain. Why? Because we can’t! Nothing we can say or do will change what is happening. Yes, we can laugh, reminisce, cry etc. but we can’t fix. We can’t try to theologically explain it away, talk about how much worse it could be, or remind them how much more of their life they still have ahead. All of these comments and others like them seem like great things to say and there is even the rare time they can help…… but there is a great danger of us not focusing on the persons pain but instead on our own awkwardness and need to be useful.
• Ssshh – Rick Warren after the death of his son said this about helping people who grieve; “The deeper the pain, the less you need to say.” It’s a profound statement which links to the last point. Sometimes being there, being available, and being silent is all that is required. It feels really hard in the moment but in my experience it really works. Often people in grief want to talk, they want to process, but they aren’t sure what to say and it can take a while to form words when their heart is a state. Giving them the space to do that is a gift to them.
• Ask direct questions – When I reflect on times I haven’t cared well for others this is one of the things I definitely wish I’d done more. Asking some direct (don’t hear aggressive) questions like; “What do you want me to do today? What should we talk about? Would you like space or for me to come over?” shows that we are caring and allowing those in grief to shape our response rather than our own preference governing it. The person may respond differently each hour and may change their mind within that hour but it will help them to feel listened to and understood.
• Your world will return to normal soon, their world doesn’t – in the immediate aftermath of a loss we all rally around those most affected. Depending on our culture there are wakes, visits, memorial services/funerals etc. All of these things are helpful and keep each of us mindful about the loss that has happened. When all of that activity subsides, as it should, our worlds often return to a relatively normal routine, apart from the spaces that we would have met that person or whatever the exact situation pertains to. Again, this is normal. If I wake up in the mooring and everything looks the same in my world I can easily forget the loss someone else is feeling. Of course for them everyday looks different and they need to adjust to that. There is nothing we can do about this, that’s what loss looks like. But it is good to be aware of this so we can continue to check in as best we can once the activity around the initial loss subsides.
• Don’t feel guilt – It’s natural to look at what someone else is going through and feel a little guilty that we aren’t facing it personally but the reality is this reaction helps no-one. Not those journeying grief, not those around us, not those we lead, and not us. We can use it as a reason to be more thankful, to better appreciate those in our lives but let’s not turn to guilt.
• We won’t get it right all the time – when I was walking through the most difficult moments of my life it was hard for people to get it right around me. I was in so many different places in my mind, sometimes within the same conversation. In the weeks that followed losing our daughter I would be in conversations where no one would mention her and I would be annoyed. Then I would move to another conversation where someone did mention her and I was annoyed that they had mentioned her! It would have been impossible for anyone to get that right. We can’t let that stop us pushing in though.

For those journeying the grief more closely, here are some things I have found helpful

• Try not to think future – in the midst of the shock of loss we often try to think ahead. We think about how painful Christmas is going to be, the next birthday, the family holiday etc. It’s a completely understandable thought pattern but the difficulty here is that we are imagining a future reality with our present resources. One thing I have learnt is that this doesn’t tend to go well. There’s something that happens when you are in the moment of loss where there is a grace, a peace, an ability to react, even in the midst of the devastation. In the limbo of knowing that our daughter was dying I used to worry about the moment when she breathed her last, if a miracle did not occur. It consumed me at times and I thought there was no way I could face it. But I did. I’m not saying it was pleasant, but when the moment came I had to react, I had to hold her, to pray, to care for my wife etc. I had no choice. The same emotion haunted me thinking of her funeral. How could I put her coffin in the ground? But again, when they day came I did, because I had no choice. There was a grace in that moment that wasn’t available in the days running up to it. I’ve learnt that God does the most amazing things that often only happen in the moment. Whilst it would be great to be prepared there are just things you can’t feel until you feel them, things you will react to that you can’t react to until you are there. For that reason I try to get people out of thinking ahead for something they don’t have the grace for yet.
• Live for the next hour – that title sounds dramatic but because in the moments of our deepest pain we can’t imagine the thought of the next big event, it’s actually a relief when you don’t have to. I now tell people who are dealing with loss – don’t think about tomorrow, just get to lunch, to dinner, to supper, to bed. Most people even in their worst moments have enough hope to get through the next hour and if you keep doing that days begin to pass. As we heal we can stretch the time to a little longer; days, weeks, months and somewhere in the process we lose the need to put time limits on it. I’m not saying time heals, only God does that, but God in our time helps us to heal.
• Walk, not run. Walk, not camp – Two of the dangers in grief is that we wallow in it and therefore find it difficult to ever move through it, or we try and push past it quickly meaning we don’t engage with it. Psalm 23 which talks about grieving and pain says this in verse 4 – “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” There is so much in that verse, but I’d never previously noticed the emphasis on walking through the dark valleys. The writer is saying that we do have to engage with those dark valleys but we aren’t meant to stay there forever. We aren’t meant to make our camp there and live in grief but we aren’t meant to run through that grief either. Just walk.
• Don’t worry if your faith seems low – it can be tough if we are experiencing grief especially if we face it after we have been faithfully praying for a miracle. Sometimes whole churches have been praying for a situation to turn around but it just didn’t happen the way we’d expected. Sometimes during the process it can feel that our faith is shrinking, especially if we are the person closest to the potential miracle. I know for me there were days were my faith felt flat and there were some days afterwards where my faith for miracles felt a little low too. This is where the beauty of a community that walks together can help us. In the moments where we have no faith, others who aren’t as close up as we are can pray those faith filled prayers. This can feel particularly hard if it is leaders who are the ones giving the hardest. That’s why we weren’t built to do this alone.
• Three other things – I’m not going to write about these in full now as I have written a full blog post about this which you can find here but in summary they are – Chose to live in the Mystery, Chose to re-engage with community and choose hope.

So there you go. It wasn’t a short list and it definitely requires a fuller conclusion but I hope it is helpful for you wherever you find yourself in navigating the journey of grief.