How to Face Adversity without Losing Hope: Part 3

Three Ways to Support Someone Facing Adversity

If adversity has taught us anything, it’s this: we were never meant to carry the weight alone. But so often, the people who love us don’t know what to do. They’re afraid to say the wrong thing, so they say nothing at all. Or they try to help but accidentally miss the mark.

Support in hard seasons is a learned skill. A ministry, even. And when it’s done well, it can change everything.

Whether you're the one in crisis right now or you’re walking alongside someone who is, here are three simple, powerful ways to show up in a way that actually helps.

1. Show up quietly.

Not every storm needs a speech. Not every heartbreak needs a solution. But almost every season of adversity needs a steady presence— someone willing to sit in the quiet without demanding anything in return.

Quiet support might look like:
• Dropping off dinner without even asking.
• Sending a text that says, “I’m here — no need to respond.”
• Sitting beside someone in a hospital waiting room, offering nothing but peace by proximity. (and of course, coffee. always coffee.)

It’s the ministry of presence, and it matters more than people realize. When life unravels, words often fall short anyway. Silence becomes its own kind of comfort.

Sometimes the kindest thing you can offer is simply your being there.

2. Resist the fix-it reflex.

We all know this instinct—the urge to offer a plan, a perspective shift, a way out. It comes from a good place. But when someone is hurting, “solutions” often feel like dismissal. It’s hard to explain, but trust us, it’s very real. We don’t want to sit in the pain, but we do need time to process. We often say, if you would like to offer a solution, sit with us first and always ask if we are ready.

People in pain don’t need a plan. They need to be seen.

Listening without trying to fix communicates:
I believe you.
I’m not overwhelmed by your reality.
You don’t have to shrink your experience to make me comfortable.

Holding space means allowing their story to be what it is—messy, uncertain, unresolved—without rushing to tidy it up. You don’t have to understand every detail to offer compassion. You only have to be willing to stay present in the discomfort.

That in itself is healing.

3. Be consistent long after the crisis.

Support usually floods in when the emergency hits—meals, texts, offers to help. But once the crisis becomes a new normal, the crowd thins. The world moves on. Life resumes….for everyone else.

But not for the person living the story.

Real love stays.
Real love returns.
Real love remembers.

Consistency might look like:
• Checking in weeks and months later (“Thinking of you today.”)
• Offering help on the ordinary days when exhaustion hits hardest
• Keeping their child’s next surgery date in your calendar, reaching out when it comes around, sending a card, dropping off a meal that day to help lighten the load. Prayer. Lots of prayer.
• Remembering the anniversary of a diagnosis or loss

When you show up after everyone else has drifted back into their routines, your presence communicates something powerful: You’re not forgotten. Your pain is not invisible. I’m still here.

Closing Thoughts

Supporting someone in adversity doesn’t require grand gestures. It requires gentleness, patience, and a willingness to show up in ways that honor the complexity of their story.

If you’re the one walking through the fire right now, send this to the people who want to help but don’t know how. Let this be a guide, a permission slip, and a reminder that you are worthy of care you don’t have to earn.

Part 4 of our series will explore how to rebuild hope while still honoring heartbreak—because in the Lemon Cake community, we don’t rush healing, but we also don’t settle for despair.