The latest episode of Everything Happens drove me home a few hours ago. The guest was Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, London, since 2012. The conversation centered on this question: How do you stay close to someone whose pain you can’t fix, whose questions you can’t answer? I encourage you to listen.

In her conclusion, Kate shared these thoughts:

I loved Sam’s three categories for being a friend through hard times. There is being for someone. That’s all the actiony stuff that we can think of when someone is struggling. That’s the boy, oh boy are they helpful. Dropping off a meal, organizing a fundraiser, driving them to and from an appointment, just the like checking it, doing it in the mix. Then there’s the being in with someone. That’s practicing empathy of seeing and understanding someone’s painful realities, of not making them feel other. Like there’s this Plexiglas wall between you. And then there’s being with them. Now, this is the toughie. Being with means staying present without any words to say, any tangible comfort to offer, or any ability to fix their circumstance. Being a friend involves one or all of those three. Being for, in, and with. 

I was baptized into being with in a room at Baptist Hospital in Gadsden, Alabama. I was 12. My dad was the cancer patient in the bed needing his trachea tube suctioned periodically. There was no talking. There was little to do. There was little choice but to be with.

Over the last 44 years I’ve tried to be a hard times friend. There’s been a lot of being for. Not as much being in with, but some. But it’s been the last decade where being with has resurfaced the most. And I have to say it comes with a little “no thank you” mixed with “what an honor.” “No thank you” because it rarely comes without flashbacks. “What an honor” because it’s sacred, beautiful, and lifegiving.

I recognize with Kate that hard times friends can be one or all three. Truth is, we can rest in being the right one in the moment; there’s no pressure to be them all. As for me, I’m striving to recognize when it’s my time to be with, run toward the pain I can’t fix, and sit in the unanswered.

Photo by Frederic Köberl on Unsplash