One of my longest friends is struggling to know what to do.

I don’t know how to help.

I tell the truth, as directly and gently as I can, but the truth is still hard-edged, barbed with implications. It plunges heart-deep, piercing decades of caringly-constructed love in seconds. There is still bleeding.

And I don’t know how to help.

I know at least some of the words, but I don’t know how to say them. I can talk in lots of settings in lots of ways to lots of people. But on this one, I don’t know how to help.

Which leaves me sitting doing precious little.

You know what I would tell other people in this situation? At least people who have some measure of a conversational relationship with God?

I’d say,

Talk with God. Tell him that you don’t know what to do, what to say. Ask him if he would be willing to help the other person understand. Ask him if he would give the other person a peace, a calmness. Ask him to help you understand your own motives for the conversation. Ask him to help you discern why this situation is so challenging for you.

Ask God to help you talk with God. Because whatever else is true in this situation, God loves both you and the other person more than you can imagine and is desiring the good of each of you.

That’s what I would say to someone else. And I would watch them walk out of my office and find some way to have that conversation with God. And I would have every confidence that the conversation would made a difference.

And yet I find myself not willing to have that conversation with God or with myself.

Well, not until just now.