How to help someone who is hurting?

I saw someone who was really hurting today. The feeling of helplessness just overwhelmed me, especially because this particular person in the situation she was in, I could understand so well! I felt like she was voicing things that I never had the courage or was it never felt like it was right to voice and yet when others were voicing the words of comfort, I somehow longed to just say the words that do not comfort, that do not heal, but are sometimes also true.

“It is horrible. It hurts. God will be there for you through this, but you are going to have to seek Him. It is not going to be easy. It is going to effect you the rest of your life, but yet keep going!”

Are those the things we long to hear when we are down and hurting? No, not usually. But you know, I remember wishing that someone would just say just that sometimes. I got tired of the pity, the words of comfort that they would pray everything would be alright, because some things cannot ever be right. But you know the things that are the truest (and I do not even know if that is a word!) is that God will be there through the pain even if you cannot see Him. He is there taking care of you when you depend on Him, even though in the pain of the tears and heartache you cannot feel His presence.

Someday, though even not far in the future, you will look back and see His hand protecting you in the trials. You will see how He carried you through and how it could have been much worse. <p. Sometimes we can get ridiculed for our faith in a unseen God and it is easy to doubt in times like that. It is easy to struggle in our faith when we see the pain that other fellow believers bring on each other. It is easy to struggle when we just want a normal life and our life is anything, but normal!

Through all of this, I draw a conclusion that God has a much bigger plan for my life and if this kind of suffering is what He intends for me, I will be thankful it is not worse!!

So, how to help someone who is hurting? I don’t really know if there is a way, but prayer does always help, being honest helps, and being there for them!