This post is not for everyone. I’m specifically thinking about dear ones who are in a season of pain, disappointment, uncertainty, and unexpected loss.

And I’m talking about the big sort of pain, the kind that takes your breath away, brings you to your knees, makes time stand still. It’s raw. It’s disorienting. It’s isolating. Life this side of heaven is not the way it was meant to be. It’s probably why it hurts so much sometimes.

I think religion tends to urge us to pray at times like this. It seems like the right answer, but for those dear ones whose pain is threatening to undo everything they know, sometimes it actually hurts to pray. The very thing that could bring much needed comfort, peace, and eventual healing. The act of lifting up a request is so vulnerable, isn’t it?

If we voice our need for help instead of remaining in whatever our personal denial, escape, or numbness is, if we really acknowledge how much it hurts—it threatens to break our hearts into even more pieces than they already are.

Even more, what happens if we ask, if we open ourselves us up to hope for a different ending to this story we’re sitting in, and the answer is a quiet and simple no? No, that cancer will not be healed. No, you will not be spared in the company’s downsizing. No, your beloved will not ever return to you. No, this season of heartbreak won’t be over for quite some time. No, you won’t see your child’s sweet smile again this side of heaven. No, this dream you’ve had is not actually the path I had for you.

It may be too much to bear.

And even as we watch the embers of the raging fires that have torn through our hearts, still feeling the fresh, searing pain of loss, we look for answers, don’t we? Answers to the whys, the what ifs, the should I haves. Answers that may not ever come.

Just as well, because often those answers are simply an empty promise of relief, and have no power to make right the unimaginable carnage that can be caused by this broken world we live in.

Dear ones, when it hurts to pray, let others help.

Our hearts can hold hope for you when your heart is too shattered to do it.

We can share our peace with you; there is plenty to go around. We can carry you to safety and rest.

And when none of us know how to do any of these things and feel helpless to do anything, Jesus, the man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief, will lead all of us in the way that only he can.

Let us look expectantly for him, for he will never let us down. I know, for I am a dear one, too. And you are not alone.