On Being features Omid Safi’s advice for helping someone you love, someone who is struggling.
Omid Safi writes (excerpt):
But don’t ask them to give you their hand. Instead, offer them your hand. Don’t ask for their heart, offer them your heart. Offer them your ear, your love, your shoulder. Release your friends, your family, from the shame of their brokenness. Let them know that you love them through the brokenness, because of the brokenness, and God-willing, after the brokenness.
Free your loved ones of the energy they spend to hide their brokenness from you. Free them of the shame of coming to you as they are.
Let them spend that energy on surviving, on healing, on thriving. Let us love one another as we are, so that we may become all we are meant to be.