Sitting in It With Him

Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. (Romans 12:15, WEB)

Paul gives a short instruction that is easy to read past. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. It is a call to enter another man's actual condition rather than standing outside it with advice, to feel what he feels instead of processing it from a safe distance. For men fighting this fight, the weeping half matters enormously, because it is the part we are worst at. When a brother finally admits he fell, the temptation for everyone else is to fix him fast, to hand him a verse or a strategy so the discomfort ends quickly and everyone can move on to feeling better.

Paul asks for something harder and kinder, that we sit down in the grief with him and let it be grief for a while before we rush to repair. A man who has just confessed a relapse does not first need a plan. He has heard the plans. What he needs is to know he is not alone in the wreckage, that someone will feel the weight of it beside him without flinching and without hurrying him past it. There is a strength in a brother who can just be sad with you, who does not need your pain resolved on a timeline that keeps him comfortable. And the other half is just as real, that when a brother marks thirty clear days, you celebrate it like it is your own good news, because in a true pack it is, and his win belongs to all of you.

Learn to weep with your men and to rejoice with them, to move at the speed of the man in front of you rather than the speed of your own discomfort. Ask God to give you a heart soft enough to do both, to grieve without flinching and to rejoice without envy, and to give you brothers who will do the same for you when it is your turn to fall or to celebrate.