I load hospital beds and oxygen tanks into houses where somebody is dying, and I visit my own mother every week at McAuley Terrace, so grief isn’t something abstract to me. It’s Tuesday. It’s the drive over. It’s watching people I love get older in real time.

Prayer, for me, isn’t a magic fix for any of that. It’s more like a place to put the weight down for a minute. When my nephew Dawson died, I didn’t have eloquent prayers. Most days it was just, “I don’t understand this, but I’m still here.” That counted. It still counts.

If you’re grieving and prayer feels hard right now — like the words won’t come, or you’re not even sure what you believe anymore — that’s normal, and it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Some of the most honest prayers I’ve ever prayed were barely sentences.

A few ways prayer has actually helped me hold grief instead of just surviving it: praying with someone else, out loud, even just once, so you’re not carrying it entirely alone. Praying the same short line every day for a season, until it becomes less like a task and more like breathing. And letting your prayers include the anger and the confusion, not just the parts that sound acceptable in church.

Comfort doesn’t always arrive as peace. Sometimes it arrives as just enough strength to get through one more day. I think that’s still an answer.

If you’re grieving right now, you’re not doing it wrong, and you’re not alone in it. Life is short, but so is the distance between you and someone who’s walked through this too. Reach out to them. Pray honestly. And give it time — more time than you think you should need.