Lysa TerKeurst shares what she does when she doesn't know what to say to a hurting friend or loved one.

Sometimes I don’t know what to say to a hurting friend.

A few hours into the process of emptying my friend’s home, the movers carried out her wedding portrait, “You want this to go with us, or are you taking it separately”?

Separately, because of the divorce that was how she’d be living her life now. Separately, that realization hit hard as she sat down to call me.

She said, “I don’t know what to do with this portrait, Lysa. What do you do with the things that have no place anymore?”

I didn’t want to give her a cliché, response. All I could say was, “I’m crying with you. I don’t have answers, but I do have prayers.”

Each time I prayed, I wrote my prayers out for my friend. Then I gave them to her. I wanted her to have them to read on those days where she was just too spent to pray on her own.