Photo credit: Karlene Macedo
“I have learned that there is more power in a good strong hug than in a thousand meaningful words.”
I found my 7-year-old niece whimpering behind a box in the laundry room. She had run off crying because no one would enforce the message she was delivering from her mom. She was obeying and trying to do right, but she didn’t have the authority to make her older brother get out of the pool.
So there she was crying and frustrated. I asked my niece why she was there and listened to her sweet little girl voice as she retold the story. Then I asked, why did you hide? I can’t comfort you if I don’t know where you are.
Picking up on that word, she sadly said, “There’s no one to comfort me.” My niece let me hold her as she expressed her frustrations. I had seen the event unfold and knew there was more to the story than she understood. In the moment, she didn’t need me to explain anything to her, she just needed to be loved.
“I know,” I said, “it’s hard to be little.” My thoughts receded to my own childhood remembering the same frustrations when I would tell my siblings, “Mom said” and be unable to make them listen.
After a little snuggle, my niece and I were off to watch a movie and ten minutes later she was back outside playing.
We never outgrow our need for comfort. It seems we exchange childhood problems for adult ones and learn to process grief in different ways.
The One who understands everything is God. I hope you will take your needs to Him in prayer. His word says he collects our tears in a bottle. How precious that our sorrows matter this much to him.
It’s important for some of our grieving to be private, but God also gave us each other.
As adults, we might reason we don’t want to bring anybody down, that we should be past it by now, or pretend that we are doing fine. I hope you will consider letting someone in to love you. What a healing gift of comfort we can receive from others. I know they might not do it exactly right, but they can try. And we can ask for what we need.
If you are the one unsure how to give comfort, remember we don’t need to know what to say. Other’s are not looking for advice, an explanation, or a spiritual justification. Those who are hurting simply need to be loved.
Like my niece, it’s easy to make the mistake of believing that there’s no one left to comfort us. But we might be difficult to find … perhaps not in the laundry room, but in the quietness of our soul.
In times of sorrow, I hope you will try something if you haven’t already: let yourself be known and loved.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”