Encouragement for the Encouragers

A few weeks ago, what we thought was going to be an enjoyable evening of watching our daughter participate in her first full-length cross-country race turned into us helping her leave the race venue after a painful, season-ending injury.

Thanks to a badly dislocated knee, Lilly’s schedule looks very different now than it did a few minutes before the race. Instead of running many miles every day with her teammates, she’s doing physical therapy over lunch and getting her knee iced after school.

She’s strong and determined, and though there have been moments of discouragement, she has handled the situation well. Still, it’s sometimes hard to know how to encourage a loved one who is hurting and disappointed.

If you want to know the uncomfortable truth, my modus operandi for much of my life was to try to avoid hard things. Even now, when a hard thing is handed to me on a pain-filled, tear-stained platter, I want it to go away. When hard things happen to people I love, I wish they would disappear even faster.

But avoidance and wishful thinking don’t solve anything. They can hurt more than they help, actually.

What does help is encouragement. But even with this, there are no guaranteed rules for success.

We all deal with painful setbacks in unique ways, don’t we? And our attitude one day might be completely different from how we feel the next day.

Sometimes we’re OK with the situation and able to see the good that could come out of it eventually. Other times, we’re more likely to get angry at the struggle and impatient with everyone around us. Or we might cry and mope and let our discouragement put a damper on everything else in our lives.

These are normal responses, but when someone we love is working through an angry or mopey phase (maybe both at once), it can be a bit tough on us. We want to help, to guide, to sit with them in their sadness and disappointment—but this can be a process. There are learning opportunities for the one suffering as well as those trying to encourage.

I’ve been there a few times lately, and it’s forced me to take an honest look at my own approach to encouragement. I’m realizing that there’s a difference between loving support and trying to make someone else feel better so that you can feel better. Here are a few ingredients that can help keep the compassion in encouragement.

• Presence

Less than a week after Lilly injured her knee, we spent most of a Thursday morning in the waiting room of an orthopedic clinic. As we sat there and watched people who had gotten there after us leave before we were even called, I got a bit antsy. Lilly didn’t seem to mind at all, though, which is a bit odd because she’s normally in a hurry to get things done.

I got the feeling she would have rather been there with me than at school, even if we were just sitting in the waiting room. Sure, I had other things I could have been doing. But none were more important than my quiet presence with my daughter at that clinic that morning.

• Patience

Disappointment and frustration can cause people to over-react or react in ways that aren’t typical for them. Pain and exhaustion only make it worse.

When I’m trying to encourage someone in this condition and my overtures of comfort are met with resistance, it sometimes leads me to react in ways that are the opposite of encouraging. Instead of understanding what is triggering the unpleasant response, I focus on the response itself.

It’s an ugly cycle, not to mention completely unproductive.

I’m not excusing bad behavior. But more often than not, sympathy is called for, rather than discipline.

For me, that requires patience. Lots of it.

• Prayer

When someone we love is hurting, praying for their needs and healing is a no-brainer. But we also need to pray for ourselves. For patience and sympathy. For insight about how to encourage best. For wisdom about what to say and when to be silent.

There’s nothing selfish about praying this way—if our goal is to encourage someone else, it only makes sense to want to do it in a way that actually helps.

• Perspective

There are huge, life-altering challenges and trials, and then there’s everything else. If our loved one is going through something from the latter category (no matter how inconvenient, stressful or painful it might be), it can be helpful to remind ourselves of what we are not helping him or her deal with.

Physical therapy is not chemotherapy, I tell myself. This too shall pass.

• • •

Now it’s your turn. How do you keep the compassion in encouragement when your loved one is struggling?

♥ Lois

P.S. I’m linking up this week with Let’s Have Coffee, Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.

Photo by Etienne Steenkamp on Unsplash.