I told a friend today that church is the safe place to go when you’d really rather be in bed with the sheets pulled up to your chin, when the world outside feels like too much to face. It’s the one place built for unconditional love, no matter what version of you walks through the door that week.
Much like my friend, when I’m stressed, I go dark. I don’t answer my phone, and texts sit unanswered for days, sometimes longer. It isn’t that I’ve forgotten the people trying to reach me. I’m just so wrapped up in working through whatever I’ve got going on that I don’t have it in me to explain myself until I can come up for air.
Some friends give me exactly the grace that moment needs, because they already know I’m working through something. They don’t ask for an explanation up front, and they don’t take the silence personally. Other acquaintances read that same silence as a slight. I’ve gotten the passive-aggressive text: “Did you forget about me?” That’s rarely a real question. It’s someone’s hurt feelings, dressed up as a check-in.
I’m lucky in that I already have a couple of relationships in my parish that know how to time this right. They don’t dig too deep before I’m ready, but they don’t disappear either. There’s a difference between friends who give you space and friends who give up on you, even when both can look like silence from the outside. The ones who stay close without pushing are the ones who leave the door open long enough for me to walk back through it.
That’s what Job’s friends got right, before they went on to get almost everything else wrong.
Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.
— Job 2:11-13, NRSV
That same friend I mentioned before went through a devastating loss last year. I can’t pretend to imagine her grief, but I could imagine being so overwhelmed and so exhausted that returning a call or a text was the last thing she had energy for. I didn’t want to give up on her. I wouldn’t want her, or any other friend, to give up on me either. I left voicemails (which I hate doing for anyone) and even let missed calls just sit there so she’d know I’d reached out, without the demand of a return call. Being supportive from a distance still counts as being supportive. I’m not one of Job’s friends. I didn’t sit with her on the ground for seven days. But I understood the kind of friendship they offered Job, and I recognized it, because I’d been on the receiving end of it myself.
That’s why I keep calling, even when I don’t hear back right away. Not to ask if I’ve been forgotten, and not to disappear either. I keep calling just to stay close enough, and patient enough, for the story to come out whenever she’s ready to tell it.
Somebody in your own life, maybe even in your parish, is sitting right now with the sheets pulled up to their chin, not ready to talk yet. Take a look and notice which kind of friend you’ve been when that happens: the one who waits, or the one who takes it personally.