A month after my surgery, I went to an industry conference. I had very little hair. I still looked like I had just been through chemo — because I had. I was eight weeks out.
Many of the folks there didn’t know about my treatment. My work friends were the last ones I told. I’m in sales, and I was still working through every treatment. I was afraid that if they knew, they wouldn’t call — not wanting to disturb me. I needed those calls to pay for my treatment. But there was something else, too. I loved that when someone called about a deal or a project, for that call I could be the person who wasn’t laying in bed too weak to walk around the block. Those calls let me be normal for twenty minutes.
But at the conference, the veil was gone. You can’t hide it when your hair tells the story for you. Folks would walk up and ask how I was doing. But their words were slower. Softer. Library voice. I’d watch their eyes flick up to my hair for just a second before they caught themselves. And I realized this was code — this was their way of saying tell me about your battle without actually saying it.
One person skipped the code entirely. He walked up and said, “I see you have had a battle. Tell me about it.” The directness was a relief. No dance. No careful tone. Just honesty. I told him. And he listened. That was it.
I’ve written before about the decision to let people in — to go from a pontoon boat handling everything alone to a battleship that lets others on board. But what I didn’t write about is what happens after you let them in. What do they do once they’re standing on the deck? What do they say?
I was at a luncheon recently. I unveiled with someone I hadn’t seen in a long time — told her about the cancer, the treatment, the whole thing. And her response was: “Gosh, who hasn’t had cancer these days.”
I just stood there for a second. What a strange thing to say. She probably didn’t mean it the way it landed. But the thing about the wrong words is that intent doesn’t matter when the person hearing them is still raw. That one sentence took my whole journey — the fear, the chemo, the surgery, the waiting, the rebuilding — and flattened it into small talk. Like I’d told her about a fender bender.
That’s the risk of taking the veil off. Sometimes you take it off and the person across from you doesn’t know what to do with what they see.
We’ve all been on both sides of this. We’ve been the one sharing something heavy, and we’ve been the one hearing it. And if you’ve been the one hearing it, you know the feeling — that split second of panic where your brain is scrambling for the right thing to say while your mouth is already forming words you haven’t approved yet.
People land everywhere:
There’s the minimizer. “Who hasn’t had cancer these days.” Or “At least they caught it early.” Or “My aunt had that — she’s fine now.” They’re trying to make you feel better. What they’re actually doing is making themselves feel better. If they can shrink your thing, they don’t have to sit in how big it actually is.
There’s the overcorrector. Eyes wide, hand on your arm, voice drops to a whisper. “Oh my GOD. Are you OKAY?” You’re standing right there at a conference with a name badge on. Clearly you’re okay enough. But now you have to manage their reaction on top of your own story.
There’s the deflector. Changes the subject within five seconds. Can’t sit in the discomfort. “Wow, that’s — hey, have you tried the shrimp?” They’re not heartless. They’re overwhelmed and they don’t know it.
There’s the fixer. Jumps straight to advice. Supplements you should take. A diet they read about. A doctor their neighbor sees. A podcast that changed their cousin’s life. They love you. They just love you in a way that sounds like a to-do list.
And then there’s the library voice. The slow, soft, careful tone. The one where every word is measured because they’re terrified of getting it wrong. It’s the voice people use when they’re trying so hard to be gentle that they forget to be human.
Here’s the thing: all of these are good people. Every single one of them is trying. They walked up to you because they care. And I have been every one of these examples at some point. They’re just standing in a moment they weren’t prepared for, doing the best they can with no script and no rehearsal. I’ve minimized. I’ve overcorrected. I’ve definitely deflected. Before my own diagnosis, I was the person who didn’t know what to do with someone else’s heavy news. I’d fumble through something, walk away, and spend the rest of the day thinking about what I should have said.
We’ve all stood in the receiving line at a funeral. Shuffling forward. Rehearsing something in our heads. And then we get to the family and what comes out? “I’m so sorry for your loss.” We all say the same thing because we’re all terrified of saying the wrong thing. And that fear? It’s love. It’s love that doesn’t know what to do with itself.
The Bible actually has a story about this — and it’s one of the oldest stories in scripture.
When Job lost everything — his children, his health, his livelihood — his three friends came to be with him. And here’s what they did first:
“Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.”
— Job 2:13
Seven days. No one said a word. They just sat there. That was the most powerful thing they did in the entire book. They showed up and they stayed and they kept their mouths shut.
It went downhill when they started talking.
Once they opened their mouths, they spent chapter after chapter trying to explain Job’s suffering. Trying to fix it. Trying to assign blame. Trying to make it make sense. And every word made it worse. God actually rebukes them for it at the end. The silence was the gift. The talking was the mistake.
Proverbs puts it even more directly:
“Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.”
— Proverbs 25:20
Sometimes the cheerful response is the cruel response. Not because you meant it to be, but because the person across from you is cold and you just took their coat.
My friend Heather (read Heather’s guest sermon about Catholic Nullity) was at my dad’s funeral. She walked up to me and said, “I am going to shut up before I say the wrong thing.”
That has stuck with me for years. It’s funny and honest and it was the most self-aware thing that was said to me at his funeral. She knew she didn’t have the words. And instead of fumbling through something that might land wrong, she just named it. She named the exact thing everyone in that receiving line is feeling — I don’t want to mess this up — and by naming it, she didn’t mess it up. That was enough.
It is okay to not know what to say. Say that. Say “I don’t know what to say.” That’s not a failure — that’s honesty. And honesty, in a moment like that, is worth more than the most polished sentence you could rehearse on the drive over.
Paul wrote in Romans:
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”
— Romans 12:15
Notice what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say explain to those who mourn. It doesn’t say fix those who mourn or advise those who mourn or find the silver lining for those who mourn. It says mourn with them. Sit in it with them. Be in the room and stay there.
And Ecclesiastes:
“There is a time to be silent and a time to speak.”
— Ecclesiastes 3:7
Knowing which one you’re in — that matters more than whatever words you’ve got loaded up.
My grandmother told my mom once, when she was heading to a funeral: “Just give a really good hug.”
That’s it. No script. No perfect words. A really good hug. My grandmother wasn’t a theologian. She didn’t quote Job or Romans. She just knew something that took me forty years and a cancer diagnosis to learn: a hug can say so many things you can’t verbalize. It can say I’m here. It can say I see you. It can say I don’t know what to say but I’m not going anywhere.
She didn’t overthink it. She just knew that sometimes the best thing you can say is nothing — and the best thing you can do is hold on.
So what do you say? When your friend tells you she has cancer. When your coworker loses a parent. When someone at a dinner tells you something so heavy you can feel the table shift.
You say: “I don’t know what to say, but can I give you a hug?”
That’s it. That’s the whole answer. You don’t need the right words. You need the right presence. You need to be the person who doesn’t run from the heaviness, doesn’t try to shrink it, doesn’t fill the silence with noise. You just stay. And you hold on.
“Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.”
— Job 2:13
My Prayer
God, when I don’t know what to say, help me stay anyway. When someone takes their veil off in front of me, let me be safe enough that they don’t regret it. Give me the grace to shut up, show up, and hold on. And when I’m the one who needs the words, send me someone who knows that a hug says more than a speech ever could. Amen.
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