Not many people are willing to truly make eye contact with the pain of other people. It’s uncomfortable, it’s messy, and it pushes against the edges of our faith frameworks. Kristen LaValley believes that we should bear witness to each other’s pain without judgment or panic. Healing happens together. We bear powerful witness to the compassion of Christ when we sit next to the hurting and say, “I’m happy to be with you, no matter what is happening around and inside you.”

Guest Post by Kristen LaValley

Do you know what happens in your brain when you make eye contact with someone who’s happy to see you?

Let’s do a little exercise.

“I don’t have to put on a show or hide any part of me. They’re just happy I’m there.“

Picture yourself walking into a room. When you look at who’s there, you see every person who has ever made you feel safe and happy. As you walk in, they look up and notice you. How do they respond? Do they smile? Do they get up and walk toward you? Do they give you a hug? What do they say?

I picture myself walking into my grandmother’s living room.

When I walk in, Nana wipes her hands on her apron (because she was in the kitchen making a peach cobbler for me). She smiles, gives me a hug, and welcomes me in. It’s always a quick hug, though. Nana doesn’t linger—she has things to do. I follow her into the kitchen, where my cousins and siblings are sitting at the table.

They jump up and yell, “Yay! You’re here!” and take turns hugging me. They tell me something ridiculous someone said before I got there. We laugh, grab forks, and dig in.

When I think of people who are glad to be with me no matter what I’m going through, I think of them. These are my low-pressure relationships. I don’t have to put on a show or hide any part of me. They’re just happy I’m there.

The people who are happy to be with us don’t wait until they see what’s in the bags we’re dragging behind us.

“You don’t have to understand someone’s pain to make room for it… You can be glad that they’re with you and let them know that they’re safe as they are, baggage and all. “

They immediately jump up to greet us and welcome us into their space. They smile and let us in.

Joy lights up the relational circuits of your brain that make connection and trust possible.

When you’re safe, you can face the dark with courage, knowing that you aren’t alone and that you don’t have to hurry through it. After looking each demon in the face, you can come up for air, trusting that these people are happy to see you no matter how haggard you are when you surface.

You don’t have to understand someone’s pain to make room for it. You don’t have to know what someone else is carrying to decide whether their emotional state is justified. You can be glad that they’re with you and let them know that they’re safe as they are, baggage and all. 

Heartbreak leaves you wondering if you’re broken, if you’ve been forgotten, if God has abandoned and rejected you. You start avoiding the sharp elbows of well-meaning brothers and sisters in Christ and start looking for a soft, grace-filled place to land and rest. Not so you can run from truth or entertain the heresy you’ve been itching to try out, but so you can breathe.

When pain derails your life, you no longer find peace in the hard edges of certainty. Instead, you find comfort in the presence of the God who is with us. In those moments, you give up trying to make your pain fit neatly inside a particular framework. You just want to know that you aren’t alone.

“There is transformational, healing power in knowing that you aren’t the only one who has held the pain you’re holding. “

There is transformational, healing power in knowing that you aren’t the only one who has held the pain you’re holding.

There’s hope in seeing someone who has ached the way you’ve ached—and survived.

There’s comfort in lament, in songs written in minor keys, and in the darker shades of paint.

You are drawn to those things not because you want to feed your sadness but because they mirror where you find yourself. When you see a painting that visualizes an emotion you have, when you hear a song that puts words to something you haven’t been able to explain, or when you read words that make you feel understood, you are able to see yourself and your pain a little more clearly.

“We are created in the image of God, so when we see ourselves, we see the image of God reflected back to us.“

We are created in the image of God, so when we see ourselves, we see the image of God reflected back to us.

When we perceive this reflection as broken or wasted, it makes us uncomfortable. Pain doesn’t feel like anything holy. But maybe it’s easier to see the sacredness of it when we realize we’re in good company.

The pain we’ve experienced has been felt by all the heroes of the faith across the ages. It’s a pain that’s familiar to God himself. He knows heartbreak, agony, disappointment, anger, and grief.

Lament is a sacred part of our faith—one we can welcome and embrace. There’s no virtue in rushing ourselves—or others—past it. Lamenting what we’ve lost isn’t a sad, unfortunate human response to suffering; it’s a beautiful, healing one.

“Lamenting what we’ve lost isn’t a sad, unfortunate human response to suffering; it’s a beautiful, healing one.“

When we see someone suffering, we can focus on sin. We can focus on blame. We can focus on mess. Or we can observe the heart of Christ for those who are suffering and bear witness to their pain, even if it costs us something.

If we allow ourselves and others to engage with every crack made by pain, we have the opportunity to see and know God in ways we haven’t before.

When we stop trying to rush people past lament and urging them to “move on,” whatever that means, we allow them to experience the faith building that can happen when we’re hurting. When we don’t rush someone’s pain and instead experience it with them, we are communicating the gospel message that we love them—not out of obligation but because we are glad to be together, no matter what.

Grab a fork and dig in to the cobbler.

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