I experienced profound grief when my mother died when I was in my twenties. She wasn’t only my mom; she was one of my very closest friends. I had the joy of leading her to Jesus a year after I became a Christian in high school at age fifteen.

I’ll never forget the Sunday morning when I arrived at our church, which my mom had also attended. Though she had died that week, I decided to preach anyway. A very strange thing happened. Usually when I walked in the door, old friends and new friends—fellow church members still excited about the freshness of our young church fellowship—would immediately greet me.

But this Sunday was entirely different. People I knew and loved walked in the other direction. A friend finally dared to approach me with a hug and talk with me. Once the ice was broken, a few others joined. But until that moment, it was like the parting of the Red Sea. They just didn’t know what to say.

It taught me a great lesson: always walk into, not away from, people’s grief. Talk about their loved one. Don’t pretend that nothing is wrong. Grief is the normal reaction to a horrible loss. Grief is nothing to ignore or fear. When we don’t talk to people about their loved one who died, we make them feel lonely and out in the cold.

In her book What Grieving People Wish You Knew about What Really Helps (and What Really Hurts), Nancy Guthrie writes, “Grief is like a lens or veil through which those going through it see and experience everything. It’s like a computer program running in the background at all times. When we speak to a grieving person about the one who died, and they begin to weep, it’s not that we ‘made them cry.’ Rather, we’ve acknowledged what was beneath the surface and given them an opportunity to release some of that sadness that was already there.”

In this audio clip, I share how those grieving need the church community: