Braving the Hurt of Your Neighbor

“Hold space for them.”

These words dropped in my spirit last February after teaching at the women’s drug rehab for the first time. I had accepted an invitation to teach a Bible study once a week and had been begging the Lord to reveal wisdom on what to share with them.

Leading up to the first day of my class I was nervous. Up until this point, I hadn’t heard anything from the Lord. Believe me, I had a lot I wanted to teach, but nothing seemed right. In my mind, I was more than qualified to teach a women’s Bible study. After all, I’ve spent a decade in women’s ministry. Nothing I shared in past Bible studies seemed appropriate. Regardless of my feelings, I went prepared with my agenda that first day. I was ready to teach them something about Jesus.

That First Class

I remember sitting there in the mist of five women struggling to break the cycle of addiction and knowing I wasn’t going to teach them as much as they were going to teach me. Here were five beautiful women who had seen and experienced deep heartache that they had to turn to drugs to numb the pain. For the first time in years, these five women were choosing to face their pain without drugs. What bravery.

During that class, I asked a few of them to share their story. One by one each woman voiced how the addiction started. Not one of them woke up one morning intending to ruin their lives. They each had an awful trigger point causing them to turn to drugs. With tears streaming down my face I looked them into the eyes and said, “You are so brave and courageous for being here.”

I called my sister-in-law that day after class and cried. I felt as if I had nothing to offer them. As I voiced my frustrations of not being enough my sister-in-law said something profound, “I think it’s religion when we think we always have to fix someone or teach them something. What if we are called to show up and love them.”

 Hold Space for Them

And that’s when I heard it, “Hold space for them.”

 “Hold space for them?  What does that mean?” I asked God.

I sat there in my car in the parking lot of the rehab and knew God was calling me to embark on a journey with these women. As I hung up the phone, I was caught by a sweep of His presence, as I felt the answer to my question settle in my spirit…Just show up every week and be there for them. Be present to their pain.

 My job is to love them. It’s God’s job is to fix them.

Yes, God calls us to minister to others through the gift of teaching. However, the love of God manifested through you is what people need. Ministry is simply loving like Jesus. I think we have complicated it and in doing so we disqualify ourselves from ministering to the people around us. Ministry is merely loving the person in front of you.

Loving Others in Pain

 The last thing I thought I would be doing is working with women struggling with addiction. It’s messy. It’s difficult. Gut-wrenching difficult, at times. What do I know about addiction? One of the hardest, yet most rewarding things I have ever done. Some weeks I want to quit and not show up. Honestly, it would be easier to sit at home and do my own thing. It’s safer.  It’s much easier to minister to others through a computer screen or while standing on a platform than sit around a table with women struggling to navigate their grief and pain.

Yet, sitting with these women week-after-week has taught me how to love people on a whole new level. I’ve learned how to sit with someone in their pain. You can’t pretend everything is okay and sweep their feeling under the rug. That’s not fair to them. Holding space for them to feel takes vulnerability and discomfort.

Here’s the truth: Christians, don’t do hard very well. We have trouble sitting in with someone through their pain. We tend to want to hurry along someone’s grief process by making blanket statements like, “Just trust God.” In reality, their pain is making us uncomfortable and behind these blanket statements is fear.

I’ve sat in church services watching these women be shunned from the church community. Instead of being held and heard, they are looked down upon for not wearing the right clothes and saying the right thing. They are judged and misunderstood. The reality is the church does not exist to cast judgment. It exists to love.

We want to fly to far off lands to minister to others, but we seem to neglect the very people in our same pew who are experiencing pain.

I’m not sure we’re very good at holding space for people to feel. I know I wasn’t. Over the last nine months of working at the rehab I’ve learned they don’t need me to cheer them up or tell them what they did was wrong. The Holy Spirit does an excellent job of doing that. They need me to sit with them in their pain. What’s amazing is: allowing space for them to share their stories has opened a way for God to release healing into the wounded places of their souls.

I love what Brene Brown says in her book Braving the Wilderness, “An experience of collective pain does not deliver us from grief or sadness; it is a ministry of presence. These moments remind us that we are not alone in our darkness and that our broken heart is connected to every heart that has known pain since the beginning of time.”

 Won’t we give someone the gift of presence?

Many people within the church are frustrated because of the wrong in the world. They’re discouraged because they don’t see change; they wonder why God is not doing anything. But they keep living their lives within the four walls of their home and church doing nothing about it. Remember you don’t have to be a scholar to love someone.

My challenge to you is to get outside your comfort zones and hold space for someone else to feel. Matthew 5:4 says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is sit and listen to someone else’s story, no matter how painful it is….

If you’re interested in giving or volunteering at the drug rehab, find out more Here.