When You Don’t Know What to Say, Stay Anyway

Sometimes the most meaningful thing we can offer is our presence—the willingness to listen, leave room for silence, and stay when there is nothing we can say to make the situation better.

I have spent a fair amount of time over the years in situations where someone was hurting and I wasn’t entirely sure what to say. Those situations have occurred in law enforcement and corrections, in pastoral ministry and chaplaincy, in classrooms and offices, at hospice bedsides, and around my own kitchen table as a husband and father. The circumstances may have been different, but the problem was often remarkably similar. Someone was facing something I could not fix, and whatever education, training, experience, or professional title I brought into the room did not provide a sentence that was going to make everything better. It can make you feel powerless and inadequate.

That can be difficult to accept when much of your life has been spent in roles where people expected you to be useful and looked to you for guidance and reassurance that somehow “everything is going to be okay.” Leaders are expected to make decisions, right? Police and correctional professionals deal with problems that often require action. Chaplains and pastors are called when people are hurting, grieving, frightened, or searching for answers. Teachers are supposed to know something worth teaching. Our children expect Mom and Dad to know what to do long after Mom and Dad have figured out that we frequently don't. Being unable to offer a solution can feel uncomfortably close to being useless.

There are plenty of situations in life where another person's problem is beyond our ability to fix, and I don’t expect that is ever going to change. I've been in rooms where no amount of education, training, compassion, prayer, or good intentions was going to change what had happened. Grief hangs around long after the condolences are offered. A life-changing diagnosis does not change because we offered words of encouragement. Regret for something done does not erase that it was done. Consequences do not suddenly disappear because someone finally understands how they arrived at them. The person sitting across from us may still need something, sure, but figuring out what that is requires us to quit measuring our usefulness by whether or not we can solve the problem. Oftentimes we simply can’t. There is no shame in being honest about that.

Listening sounds simple until we actually try to do it. My personal and professional experiences alongside my pastoral training gave me plenty of opportunity to examine how I listened. You know what I had to admit? Silence is awkward. We don’t like it. It’s like “dead air” on a radio station. We think we need to fill it with something, however inane it may be.

So what do we do? Well, I think we sometimes listen to enough of someone's story to recognize its general shape and begin preparing a response while they are still talking. We may already be thinking about reassurance, advice, Scripture, a similar experience of our own, or the next question we want to ask. Meanwhile, the person sitting across from us may not have reached the part they actually needed us to hear, or thought about the impact of what they are saying until they actually say it.

You know what people do? They avoid the real issue until they know the space is safe to bring it up. I've seen someone talk around something for quite a while—sometimes an hour or more—before finally getting to what brought them into the conversation. A person may need to know whether we're actually listening before risking something deeply personal. They may start with the part that is easiest to say and work slowly toward the part that isn't. If I become impatient with that process because I'm anxious to help, I can answer a question they were never asking and miss the one they were working up the courage to ask.

That’s when the silence becomes awkward and starts applying the pressure to fill it. We can begin wondering whether we should ask another question, offer reassurance, say something spiritual, tell the person everything is going to be okay, or somehow get the conversation moving again. The urge to fill that space can be powerful, especially when another person's pain is sitting right in front of us. It’s natural to want to “do” or “say” something.

Some of the least helpful things we do or say come from that discomfort. We blurt out familiar phrases and cliches because we genuinely care and want to offer something we think might help. We tell someone “everything happens for a reason.” We encourage them to “stay strong.” We tell them their loved one “is in a better place” or that “at least the suffering is over.” We may believe every word we are saying, but our sincerity does not guarantee that the words fit what the other person needs at that moment. Sometimes they don’t need any words at all. Just you, sitting there, in the space with them.

But I have also seen silence used badly. Someone can sit quietly because they are afraid of the conversation, don't know how to respond, or hope the difficult subject will pass if they wait long enough. A person who has finally worked up the courage to say something painful can tell when the person across from them has emotionally left the room. Sitting there without speaking does not automatically mean we are present. And finding that balance is the hard part.

Good listening requires engagement—passive and active. Passive engagement pays attention to what the person is saying and to where they hesitate. That awkward silence may rear its ugly head, but resist the urge to fill it. Let them finish the thought even if you think you know where it is going. Notice when a pause appears to be someone gathering the courage to continue. Active engagement asks questions when it helps them go deeper, rather than filling the silence because it has become uncomfortable. And don’t be hesitant to provide a direct answer when a question is asked of you. Avoiding one in the name of listening can become its own form of neglect.

The same is true of spiritual care, and this is where we need to tread carefully. Prayer can be deeply meaningful and applicable. Scripture can bring comfort, direction, correction, and hope. There are conversations where faith needs to be discussed plainly and where avoiding it would make little sense for a chaplain or pastor. But there are also moments when reaching for a Bible verse before hearing the rest of someone's story can close a door that had only begun to open. And that’s something we do not want. We should know why we are speaking before assuming that speaking is what care requires.

None of this belongs exclusively to chaplains or pastors. It’s good practice for concerned laypeople, too. These conversations happen between supervisors and employees, teachers and students, correctional professionals and the people in their care, police officers and families in crisis, friends who answer the phone in the middle of the night, and husbands and wives sitting across the kitchen table from each other. Difficult conversations don't restrict themselves to professional spiritual-care settings.

We bring ourselves—chaplains, ministers, laypeople—into all of those conversations. Our personalities, fears, beliefs, histories, insecurities, and need to be useful come with us. Someone else's crisis can make us anxious, and anxiety has a way of making people want to talk. We can offer advice because we need movement in a situation that needs stillness. We can push reconciliation because unresolved conflict bothers us. We can rush someone toward hope because their despair is difficult to sit with. Before long, we may be trying to make the conversation easier for ourselves while believing we are helping them.

And, honestly, there have been conversations where I left wondering whether I had helped at all. I have phrased things poorly, asked questions I would ask differently today, and occasionally recognized afterward that I had been more interested in moving a conversation forward than understanding where the other person actually was. Education can improve our skills, and years of working with people can sharpen our judgment, but neither gives us control over what another person will do with what we offer.

That’s difficult for leaders and helping professionals because we like outcomes. We want to be able to see some resolution—reconciliation, insight, forgiveness, a plan, renewed faith, a decision, or at least some visible relief. It makes us feel good about ourselves, like we accomplished something. The problem is that people rarely cooperate. Some conversations end without resolution. People remain angry. Families stay divided. Grief remains grief. The person we hoped would make a different decision may walk away and make the same one again.

But our presence can still have value.

The person we spent time with may not remember a single thing we said to them. But they may remember that we did not rush them, judge them, turn their pain into a lecture, or leave because the conversation became uncomfortable. They may remember that someone was willing to hear the part of the story that everyone else seemed anxious to fix. Someone, at least, allowed them to open their vent pipe and release some pressure.

When you sit with someone who is struggling, you do not need to enter the conversation armed with the perfect sentence—no flow chart that says, “If they say this, you say that…” Listen long enough to understand what is actually being said and become comfortable with the conversation not needing to go anywhere. Speak only when your words serve the person rather than your own discomfort. Ask the difficult question when it needs to be asked. Pray when prayer belongs in the moment. Tell the truth when truth needs to be spoken or is asked for. But allow silence when another person needs room to find the words.

And when there is nothing you can say that will make the situation better, just stay.