How do you comfort a friend who has been affected by a horrific, senseless tragedy?

What do you even begin to say? What do you do?

I don't think we are taught to truly be comforters. There are some people who have learned to fill that role. There are some who has been gifted with the ability to comfort in times of heartbreak, and then there are people like me who yearn with all their heart to play the part but feel so helpless.

Society overlooks the truth of life - nothing really matters except for the people we come into contact with during our lives - for a selfish substitute. It is built into us to selfishly look after our own needs and wants, and that bleeds into relationships. Many, many relationships have no depth because they are built on what the other person can do for you instead of the person. No worries if you lose one, there are plenty more out in the world. Lots of the time you aren't friends with a person because you think the person is genuinely wonderful, you are friends so you don't have to be alone. So you can tell them all about your life. Your achievements. Your annoyances.

Except, not necessarily about the things that really matter, and with that kind of foundation for a relationship, how would we be capable of comforting each other? To comfort someone else is to dig down deep, deep. It is forcing yourself to experience empathy and to acknowledge and sometimes to hurt. Why would we do that for someone who is just there to fill a hole in our social circles?

It's true - even when we try to truly comfort, our love can't always reach down to the deep parts of another's heartache. When true heartbreak comes, only God can heal. Only God can fill the hopeless void that appears in our aching hearts. The true Comforter is God and only God.

And so, because we don't have words or actions or we can't even fathom the sorrow, we say, "I'm so sorry. You're in my prayers."

Maybe this friend is in our prayers, but if we've experienced heartbreak, we know the depression, the hopelessness, and the aching sorrow continues on long after those seven words fade from our memory, long after we are remembered in someone else's prayers, long after life moves on.

I know these things so I don't want to be apathetic. Even if I don't see her for a week or a month after this tragedy has happened, I don't want to come up to her and pretend like none of it occurred because she will never forget this. It will always be a memory that makes her heart ache. What is the point of having a friend, of being a friend, if you pretend like everything is always fine and dandy? If that is what a relationship comes down to, then I don't want one.

I want depth, even if it means hurting.

I suck at discussing the emotionally important things face to face. I can encourage. I can do facts. I can do funny, but when it comes to genuine rawness, I can't. If it does come out, it comes out in a blubbering, stuttering mess, and I feel stupid. Sometimes I attempt to let people know what I'm truly feeling or how much they actually mean to me through written word, but I end up doubting if even the recipients of my sad attempts truly understand what I meant when I wrote what I wrote. Sometimes it feels like I am writing to a wall by the way my truthfulness slides right off and disappears. I'll spend money on gifts, hoping my love and appreciation will come through, but all of it ends up making me feel naked and like I've just thrown my pearls out to the swine.

I don't know if this is just because of my personality, but I don't think it is entirely. I think a lot of people don't know how to hurt together, to be broken together. So we hurt alone. Isolated inside of ourselves. We're not suppose to be islands, but we are, and that makes the hurt last.

When I had my wisdom teeth pulled out, a friend came over with a movie to entertain me through my misery, but when my grandfather was hit by a car and in a coma for a week before he died, I was alone. I cried every single night that whole week when I'd take the dogs on a walk. Sure, I had family around, but I don't even think families know how to hurt together. When he was finally taken off of life support, my parents were down in California with my grandmother, and I was here with my two older siblings, but I might as well have been alone.

We don't know how to say when we need someone. We don't even know when we need someone.

But I said only God can truly comfort another's ache? That is true, but we can be the way He does it. Of ourselves, we are nothing, but in each of us is a small example of His love, of His grace, of His mercy. We can't fix everything because of our feeble flesh and bones, but we can be part of the band aid or the stitches.

So what am I suppose to do to comfort someone whose friend was shot and killed at random as he drove home from a youth ministry he volunteered? What am I suppose to say to someone who is surrounded by the individuals who were witnesses to the senseless tragedy?

She bears her sorrows and the sorrows of everyone around her, and I only wish I could somehow help her bear the burden.