Dear Friend, I Need You Now

Our Keepsake Journal is Here! 🎉

If there’s ever been a time when I’ve desperately needed the strength of others to carry me, it is now. If I’ve ever needed for someone to hold me together and be there for me, the time is now.

My cross is too heavy to carry alone. I need you to carry this burden with me. I need you to pause and take a moment out of the fast pace of you own life to be there for me. To wipe my tears. To listen. To do some of the physical lifting while I weep and mourn and bear the intense sorrow and pain that is mine alone. I need you to refrain from judgment and offering clichés that are unhelpful.

I haven’t even crossed the threshold of the pain and emptiness and sorrow. It’s not over for me, it’s only just begun. I need you to know that even if you don’t understand it.

I need more than your text messages of condolence. I need more than a passing, “How are you doing?” I need more than “he’s in a better place” or “the firsts are always the hardest.”

I need your physical presence. I need your hugs.

I need you to say, “I know today is a really hard day, I’m thinking about you.” I need you to say, “This sucks and there is nothing I can say to make it better, but I’m here for you.” I need you to say, “I will be at your house on Thursday to hang out with you. What should I bring you for lunch?”

I need your prayers. I’m barely holding on to my faith. I need you to lift me up and help me find the courage to believe again.

I need you to say his name. Tell me something you loved about him. Tell me something you see of him in me. Tell me how badly you miss him.

If I don’t feel like talking, I need you to be okay with my silence. If I want to talk about it, I need you to listen—really listen—even if you’ve heard it a hundred times before. Even if it’s painful to hear. Even if I cry. Even if it makes you cry.

I need you to understand and acknowledge that things like the holidays are going to be hard, but every day things are hard, too. He died on a Wednesday and now Wednesdays are hard. He and my mom often took my kids to dinner on Thursdays and now Thursdays are hard. He came to nearly every one of my kids’ sporting events and school programs and now nearly every one of their sporting events and school programs is hard. We often went to church together and now going to church is hard.

Life is hard. Every day is hard in one way or another. Odds are any given day of the week or minute of the day is hard for me. If I say something that hurts your feelings or that is out of character for me, I’m most likely having a hard moment or a hard day. I need you to understand that. I need you to let it slide. I need you to offer me encouragement anyway.

I need you to understand that I can’t really be there for you the way you might want or need. I am grieving and that truly takes everything out of me. That’s all I can do right now. I can’t offer advice or encouragement or be the caretaker and optimist I once was.

I probably won’t think to make plans with you any time soon. I’ll probably turn down your invitations to go out. I need you to keep checking in. I need you to keep trying. I need you more than ever right now.

I need you to help hold me together. I need you to help me be strong. I need you to help light up my darkness. I need you to help. I need you.

You may also like:

Supporting Friends Through the Ebbs and Flows of Grief

This is Grief

Please Don’t be Afraid of My Grief

Want more stories of love, family, and faith from the heart of every home, delivered straight to you? Sign up here!

So God Made a Mother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A MOTHER available now!

Order Now

Check out our new Keepsake Companion Journal that pairs with our So God Made a Mother book!

Order Now

So God Made a Mother's Story Keepsake Journal

Her View Shop

Leanne Willen

Leanne Willen is a wife, mother of four, writer, and teacher. She writes about motherhood, faith, finding joy, and grief. Her blog Life Happens When encourages and challenges others (and herself) to embrace the ordinary amid the everyday chaos of life.

I Obsessed over Her Heartbeat Because She’s My Rainbow Baby

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Mother and teen daughter with ice cream cones, color photo

I delivered a stillborn sleeping baby boy five years before my rainbow baby. I carried this sweet baby boy for seven whole months with no indication that he wouldn’t live. Listening to his heartbeat at each prenatal visit until one day there was no heartbeat to hear. It crushed me. ”I’m sorry but your baby is dead,” are words I’ll never be able to unhear. And because of these words, I had no words. For what felt like weeks, I spoke only in tears as they streamed down my cheeks. But I know it couldn’t have been that long. Because...

Keep Reading

We’re Walking the Road of Twin Loss Together

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Mother and son walk along beach holding hands

He climbed into our bed last week, holding the teddy bear that came home in his twin brother’s hospital grief box almost 10 years earlier. “Mom, I really miss my brother. And do you see that picture of me over there with you, me and his picture in your belly? It makes me really, really sad when I look at it.” A week later, he was having a bad day and said, “I wish I could trade places with my brother.” No, he’s not disturbed or mentally ill. He’s a happy-go-lucky little boy who is grieving the brother who grew...

Keep Reading

Until I See You in Heaven, I’ll Cherish Precious Memories of You

In: Grief, Loss, Motherhood

Toddler girl with bald head, color photo

Your memory floats through my mind so often that I’m often seeing two moments at once. I see the one that happened in the past, and I see the one I now live each day. These two often compete in my mind for importance. I can see you in the play of all young children. Listening to their fun, I hear your laughter clearly though others around me do not. A smile might cross my face at the funny thing you said once upon a time that is just a memory now prompted by someone else’s young child. The world...

Keep Reading

The Day My Mother Died I Thought My Faith Did Too

In: Faith, Grief, Loss

She left this world with an endless faith while mine became broken and shattered. She taught me to believe in God’s love and his faithfulness. But in losing her, I couldn’t feel it so I believed it to be nonexistent. I felt alone in ways like I’d never known before. I felt helpless and hopeless. I felt like He had abandoned my mother and betrayed me by taking her too soon. He didn’t feel near the brokenhearted. He felt invisible and unreal. The day my mother died I felt alone and faithless while still clinging to her belief of heaven....

Keep Reading

To the Healthcare Workers Who Held My Broken Heart

In: Grief, Loss

Baby hat with hospital certificate announcing stillbirth, color photo

We all have hard days at work. Those days that push our physical, mental, and emotional limits out of bounds and don’t play fair. 18 years ago, I walked into an OB/GYN emergency room feeling like something was off, just weeks away from greeting our first child. As I reflect on that day, which seems like a lifetime ago and also just yesterday, I find myself holding space for the way my journey catalyzed a series of impossibly hard days at work for some of the people who have some of the most important jobs in the world. RELATED: To...

Keep Reading

Can I Still Trust Jesus after Losing My Child?

In: Faith, Grief, Loss

Everyone knows there is a time to be born and a time to die. We expect both of those unavoidable events in our lives, but we don’t expect them to come just 1342 days apart. For my baby daughter, cancer decided that the number of her days would be so many fewer than the hopeful expectation my heart held as her mama. I had dreams that began the moment the two pink lines faintly appeared on the early morning pregnancy test. I had hopes that grew with every sneak peek provided during my many routine ultrasounds. I had formed a...

Keep Reading

I Loved You to the End

In: Grief, Living

As your time on this earth came close to the end, I pondered if I had given you the best life. I pondered if more treatment would be beneficial or harmful. I pondered if you knew how much you were loved and cherished As the day to say goodbye grew closer, I thought about all the good times we had. I remembered how much you loved to travel. I remembered how many times you were there for me in my times of darkness. You would just lay right next to me on the days I could not get out of...

Keep Reading

I Hate What the Drugs Have Done but I Love You

In: Grief, Living

Black and white image of woman sitting on floor looking away with arms covering her face

Sister, we haven’t talked in a while. We both know the reason why. Yet again, you had a choice between your family and drugs, and you chose the latter. I want you to know I still don’t hate you. What I do hate is the drugs you always seem to go back to once things get too hard for you. RELATED: Love the Addict So Hard it Hurts Speaking of hard, I won’t sugarcoat the fact that being around you when you’re actively using is so hard. Your anger, your manipulation, and your deceit are too much for me (or anyone around you) to...

Keep Reading

Giving Voice to the Babies We Bury

In: Grief, Loss

Woman looking up to the sky, silhouette at sunset

In the 1940s, between my grandmother’s fourth child and my father, she experienced the premature birth of a baby. Family history doesn’t say how far along she was, just that my grandfather buried the baby in the basement of the house I would later grow up in. This was never something I heard my grandmother talk about, and it was a shock to most of us when we read her history. However, I think it’s indicative of what women for generations have done. We have buried our grief and not talked about the losses we have experienced in losing children through...

Keep Reading

A Friend Gone Too Soon Leaves a Hole in Your Heart

In: Friendship, Grief, Loss

The last living memory I have of my best friend before she died was centered around a Scrabble board. One letter at a time, we searched for those seven letters that would bring us victory. Placing our last words to each other, tallying up points we didn’t know the meaning of at the time. Sharing laughter we didn’t know we’d never share again. Back in those days, we didn’t have Instagram or Facebook or Snapchat or whatever other things teenagers sneak onto their phones to capture the moments. So the memory is a bit hazy. Not because it was way...

Keep Reading