Just how do you break bad news?

Pastorally, like every pastor I’m sure, I’m asked some pretty hard questions. Oftentimes I’m conscious of the breath-prayer I shoot up to God; “Lord, just how do I answer this one?”

Just about every time I find myself in these situations, however, I’m thankful for the spiritual assurance I get in being comfortable that I don’t need to have the answers provided I’m present and empathetic.

Just about no one expects us to fix their problems for them, even as we’re tempted to think it all depends on us. You’d be surprised how unimportant ‘advice’ is.

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One such question I got some time ago stumped me.

A father reaching out to me for a way to broach with his ten-year-old daughter the issue that the marriage between he and her mother was ending. It was not his idea nor his will to end the marriage, so he was also dealing with his own gut-wrenching grief, as he shared through a quivering chin and uncustomary tears, so concerned for how she would take the news.

He felt that his daughter had some idea that this was happening which was creating pressure for him to address the issue. I felt sad that not only was this a tough conversation for him to prepare for and have, but that it also revealed some lack of intimacy between them, which of course is not uncommon. (How many of us would feel perfectly equipped to have such a conversation with any of our children?)

Without imagining that he was guilt-free in consideration of why the marriage had failed, I reflect now about his most broken lament.

His heart was breaking for his daughter’s broken heart to come. His regret for the shaky status of his family. His despair for not being able to convince his wife to stay. His anguish at not being able to ‘fix’ this. His heart was, of course, also broken for himself. Like so many men and women in these situations, we can seriously doubt if we’ll make it through.

Now, he could possibly have been largely to blame for his situation. I concede that.

He was about to live out the consequences of a failed marriage. It was all ahead of him.

Having been there, and having been in the situation where I took responsibility for the failures I’d made of my first marriage, I wanted to encourage him to make the most of what seemed like a cruel opportunity. He would no doubt grow if only he could learn to rely on God. But how does one say that without it sounding heartless? I remembered how cruel that advice was when I received it—yet that truth can be spoken in love, but not without wisdom scaffolded in compassion.

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Just how do you bear bad news and break it in an appropriate way?

It’s a six-million-dollar question. Of course, we need to do it compassionately, but we also need to be direct. From a counselling viewpoint, I often make time and room for ‘warm up’ so there is at least the re-establishment of rapport before something heavy is ‘brought into the room’.

There is no ‘right’ set of words, but an equal mix of compassionate care with direct speech works best, I think.

Somehow, I think people are geared to absorb bad news because there is the safeguard of numbness. To feel numb, which is not a void of emotion, is the body’s way of coping with news far too great to absorb in one given moment. It’s the body’s way of being gentle with itself—when one’s reality is just too real. There are days and weeks and months ahead to apportion to the grief that will inevitably come; and so compassionate is God that it’s just a day at a time that we get them.

We can and we should call the person who is despairing to hope, but that must be done tenderly, even apologetically, which is a test of our humility. It requires great courage to be vulnerable; willing to fail for the purposes of compassion.

NOTE: some facts herein have intentionally been changed.

Photo by Carlos Arthur M.R on Unsplash