How to Carry a Friend's Grief Without Carrying It Home
I sat with a friend going through a brutal divorce, and then was sad for four days. I didn't know to leave the burden with Jesus.
A friend was going through a very rough divorce. One day he came down and talked to my husband and me for several hours. When he left, I wanted to help bear his burden (so scriptural), because he was so beyond sad.
Because I didn’t know better, I went about my daily life for about four days, so very sad.
Sometime later, in healing prayer training, I learned that the griefs of this world are actually too heavy for me to bear.
Isaiah 53:4 says, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”
Jesus has stronger shoulders than we do. He is the one who is able to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows.
Today, if my friend came to visit, I would listen and pray, in whatever way felt correct: with him, or silently, depending on where the conversation went.
And when the visit ended, I would pray a prayer of release:
Thank you, Lord, that I was privileged to enter into this grief with my friend. Now, I need to give you this grief, Lord Jesus, because it is too heavy for me. But it's not too much for you. Thank you that you are strong enough to bear it, so please do bear it for me. I worship and praise you because of your amazing capacity and sacrifice and grace to carry all of these things.
Then I would go about my day as myself, with the Lord Jesus.
That might include some tears, and definitely additional prayer. But not the sense of laboring through wet cement.
And in the times that I myself have gone through deep grief, I have learned to give the grief to Jesus and let him carry it. I picture handing the grief to Jesus, like a reverse Santa Claus (because I’m passing along a bag of heaviness, not a bag of gifts).
I suspect other people might picture themselves carrying the grief to the foot of the cross.
In any case: we don’t need to carry it ourselves.
Lord Jesus, thank you that you were prophesied to be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Thank you that you understand the desperate sadness, the bleakness, the lack of hope and joy.
Lord God, please show us how to bear one another’s burdens as your body, in a way that leaves us all stronger, not weaker. We cry out for more of you.
Whatever you do, do it with love,
Amy Joy
P.S. About a year ago I released a quick read, Walking Through Grief, with articles on some of the practical aspects of helping someone else as they grieve.
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