What do you say?

Have you ever known anyone who lost someone close to them? What do you say to them? Have you ever lost someone close to you? What did people say to you? In light of my role as a Pastor, I figured I better learn how to effectively care for grieving people. Of course this past summer opened my eyes to this reality in new ways. Out of my strong desire to learn how to effectively love and care for the grieving, I chose to do some research on grief recovery for one of my grad class assignments. I thought you might find some of these thoughts interesting. Here is a small excerpt from one of my papers:

It seems evident that empathy is what people want and need more than anything else in their journey through grief. In a recent interview with a Christian Counselor he said that true empathy is when you “…connect with the grieving person, get in their place, feel what they feel, try to walk what they are walking, and talk what they are talking.” We practice empathy most effectively through intense listening. Perhaps one of the most common ways to interfere with an effort to express true empathy is to give advice. By nature, advice giving can quickly undercut an attempt to communicate understanding of a person’s feelings. You cannot possibly know exactly what a grieving person is feeling since it is not happening to you. Therefore, if you give advice, you are suggesting that the way that they are feeling needs fixed or changed. As a result, you are failing to validate a person’s right to feel. This is a common and innocent mistake made by so many of us. One of the counselors that I interviewed said with conviction that “when you are dealing with a grieving person, you are either validating or denying their feelings…one or the other.” Remember, there is certainly a difference between validating and condoning. But, empathy means abstaining from blanket comments, mini-sermons and advice. Empathy means being in shock with them, maybe being angry along with them, and resisting the need to break silence with filler statements.

So, "what do you say"? Perhaps that's the wrong question. You may be supporting a grieving person right now. You may be supporting one tomorrow! You just never know. Life is a vapor.