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“…weep with those who weep.”
Romans 12:15 (ESV)

You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought as I scrolled past my friend’s words.

She’d posted a picture of her beloved family dog who they had put down that morning and written: “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through.”

I don’t doubt it was hard or even the hardest thing she’d been through yet. But her statement caught me short.

At once, I compared our loss to hers.

I’d been reeling from the sudden death of my husband at forty-seven years old. Every dream and plan we’d had together had been buried with him. I’d not only walked through my excruciating grief but shepherded our seven children through theirs.

I’d faced countless decisions on my own. Learning how to fix the washer or managing the rental house had become my new normal. I’d begged God to help me raise these children to adults and spent lonely nights with the ache of missing.

It had taken God’s grace and everything in me to let go of the life we had and take hold of the new life that was.

I knew the death of a family pet was hard, but her words stung as I instinctively compared our hardest loss with hers.

Now before you think I’m an awful friend, my spirit immediately checked me. This wasn’t the first time I’d been tempted to compare loss.

After Dan’s death, many well-meaning friends had offered understanding. “I know what you’re feeling. My husband was deployed for eighteen months.” Or “I went through this after my great-aunt died.”

Other losses seemed harder, like my friend whose young husband and only two children were killed in a single accident. My grief felt manageable compared to hers.

But comparing grief is meaningless.

Is it harder to lose a child? Or a parent as a child? Is it harder on a family for the mom or the dad to die? Or saying goodbye slowly after diagnosis or suddenly without notice? Is it harder for a widow with young children or a widow after her nest has emptied?

Yes.

It’s all hard and it all hurts.

Which is why comparing grief is futile.

Even in a roomful of widows, our losses are different. We’ve all had different marriages, different experiences, and different issues that make up unique kinds of loss.

“Weep with those who weep,” we’re instructed in Romans 12:15.

Nothing is said about first determining the kind of hurt or size of the hurt. We’re not told to compare our grief and see whose is worse. Or weigh whose grief is big enough to count or to warrant our empathy.

We’re simply told to weep with one another. To acknowledge each other’s pain and loss and to walk with each other through it.

No pain is too big for God nor too small.

That day when I read my friend’s words, God immediately checked me. And so, righting my heart, I prayed for her and typed back a sincere condolence.

She was hurting. And her real hurt didn’t in any way diminish my own. God’s grace is deep enough for us both.

Dear Lord, help me to see others as You do and to love them as You do. Help me to empathize with their struggles and their pain, and to come alongside them to encourage and lift them up. Forgive me for being so busy in my own grief that I don’t see others’ hurts and needs. Create in me a clean heart that beats to the rhythm of Yours. Amen