By Ebie Hepworth
“ Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2
It is one thing to believe in bearing one another’s burdens. It is another thing entirely to let someone bear yours when life gets heavy. We can nod along to the beauty of community grief in theory, but practicing it requires a different kind of courage. Because community can be messy. It doesn’t come with signed agreements or carefully constructed privacy. The people who know your stories also know your children, your kitchen, your dreams, and the particular tone your voice takes when you’re tired. And maybe that is precisely what makes it so sacred. Because deep healing often hides in the unglamorous spaces of shared life.
My son Asa had been diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, while my own body was carrying the grief of infertility and all the unanswered questions that came with it. Our days were filling with hospital hallways, long drives, flights to specialists, fertility appointments, and medical language I could barely pronounce, much less emotionally absorb. Cardiology. Neurology. Pulmonology. Reproductive endocrinology. Each appointment seemed to demand more strength than I felt I had. When I finally gathered the energy to be around people, I didn’t want to talk about any of it. I didn’t want to be the designated downer. So I laughed at the jokes, kept my grief at a respectable distance, and told myself I didn’t need to bleed in every room. And I didn’t. But eventually, I had trained my pain to mind its manners so well that no one knew how badly I was hurting.
So when I walked into a women’s worship night at my church, it was with reluctance written all over me. Around me, women stood and swayed as the music swelled, while I sat still, quietly telling God that nobody in the room could understand how badly my heart was hurting.
Then my friend Sammy tapped me on the shoulder. “Can you come with me for a sec? I have something for you.”
She reached under her chair and pulled out a sleek black carry-on travel bag. “I’ve been thinking about all the travel you have to do for Asa’s doctor’s appointments,” she said. “I thought maybe this could help. Something pretty to carry it all in.”
I stared at the bag, then at Sammy, and began to weep. It wasn’t about the gift itself. It was that she saw me. She saw the undisclosed weight I had been carrying. And instead of offering answers, she offered a place to “put my stuff.”
Later that night, the Holy Spirit whispered: She’s giving you the gift of baggage. Let her carry it with you. She couldn’t carry the diagnosis, but she could help carry the story. She could say, without needing to understand every detail, I see you. I’m with you.
We spend so much of our lives trying to make our pain invisible, and yet this is how heaven keeps finding us—in ordinary moments through regular people who dare to ask, to see, and then offer to hold what we’d rather hide.
Grieving, I’ve come to learn, can feel like spiritual warfare. But grieving alone—that’s spiritual suicide.
This is one of the holiest gifts we can offer another person in grief. Not answers, but presence. We see this in Jesus Himself. On the night before the crucifixion, Jesus entered the Garden of Gethsemane knowing exactly what awaited Him: betrayal, suffering, abandonment, and the cross. And in the midst of His sorrow, the Son of God invited a few trusted friends closer.
“My soul is very sorrowful, even to death,” He told Peter, James, and John. “Remain here, and watch with me” (Matthew 26:38 ESV). Jesus did not ask His disciples to rescue Him from the cross; He invited them to help carry the night.
Years ago, I circled the word remain in this passage and wrote the Greek word meinate beside it in my Bible. Unfortunately, my handwriting resembles that of a twelve-year-old boy, and for years I mistakenly read my own note as marinate. Marinate with Me. I know that is not the translation, but I have grown rather fond of it, because grief does not need spectators nearly as much as it needs companions. People willing to marinate with us in the ache.
This is community grief. It is not communal despair. It is not asking other people to become our savior or carrying every private sorrow into every room. It is simply refusing to make isolation our primary coping mechanism.
This is the kind of garden God wants our grief to grow in. Maybe you don’t have this kind of community. And the ache of that absence feels louder than the grief itself. If that’s you, I just want to say that Jesus sees you. You’re not broken because your community isn’t built yet. You’re not faithless because you’re still waiting for safe people. And you’re not weak for longing for a place to be known and held. That longing was planted in you by the One who is community. Father, Son, Spirit.
So start small. One conversation. One text that says, “I’m not okay.” One whisper to God asking Him to send someone who will stay. And if it takes time, let that time do its work in you. Because sometimes, the slow formation of a safe community is shaping you into the kind of person who will be that sanctuary for someone else one day.
Until then, continue to grieve with God. He is not a placeholder for people; He is the presence that prepares you for them. He is the One who keeps every tear you cry like treasure. You are not unseen in your solitude; you are held in your lament.
For pastors and ministry leaders: In Midnight Hallelujah, Ebie Hepworth offers an honest, compassionate guide for those walking through grief, disappointment, and unanswered prayer. It is a meaningful resource for helping hurting people in your congregations find hope again when life has left them weary.