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When a friend is suffering, we want to help, but so many of us just don’t know how, or feel inadequate for the task. 

Vaneetha Rendall Risner is familiar with suffering. She also knows how it can draw us to God. Her first suggestion for those of us who don’t know how to support a hurting friend is to pray. Risner grew closer to God through her own suffering: polio, partial paralysis, bullying, the death of a child, an unfaithful spouse, and an unwanted divorce. She knows the value of friends showing up. 

“We should pray for their needs—like their spiritual needs, their emotional needs, their physical needs–that they would turn to the Lord and find peace. That’s the biggest thing: just that they would find God in their suffering,” she says. “Show up at their doorsteps, go to the hospitals, sit in the waiting room, ask them if they want company to go somewhere. Just be there,” she says. “Jesus, we see Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, and He just wanted His disciples with Him, so presence is such a powerful thing.” 

And if your friend has been hurting for a while but you’ve never known how to help, Risner says showing up even now has value. Show up, encourage, and listen.

“I would also say, ‘It’s never too late.’ If something really hard happened to a friend and it’s been months, even, you can still reach out. Don’t think, ‘I wasn’t there in the middle of the crisis, I can’t be there now.’  It’s never too late to reach out.” 

Risner’s Desiring God article that inspired this conversation is titled “S.L.O.W.: How to Love Suffering People.” Learn more about Vaneetha Rendall Risner here.