As I’ve said many times, I’m always listening for examples of when someone knows just the right thing to say.

So often, we want to express our love, our sympathy, or our sorrow, but we can’t find the right words. It’s so gratifying to hear a person know just what to say.

Sometimes, too, it’s not obvious that something needs to be said; you must be alert to people’s unspoken thoughts.

A friend of mine—I’ll call her Jill—told me this story.

Jill has always been very close to her in-laws. For many years, her husband’s one sibling, a brother, wasn’t married, and her husband’s parents made a big fuss over Jill as their only daughter-in-law.

But then her husband’s brother got engaged. As she told me, Jill felt jealous of his fiancée and worried about being displaced in a relationship that was important to her. There wasn’t any reason for her to feel anxious about it, but that was how she felt.

She told me how one night at dinner, the entire family spent the whole time talking about the upcoming wedding with her brother-in-law and future sister-in-law. After they’d all finished dinner, my friend collected some dinner plates, and was putting them down in the kitchen when her mother-in-law walked in behind her. Her mother-in-law said very tenderly, “Jill, you know you’ll always have a special place in our hearts.”

Jill told me that she almost started crying, it meant so much to her.

I thought this was just about the perfect thing to say. Her mother-in-law guessed what Jill might be feeling, and wanted to reassure her. She didn’t deny what my friend was feeling by saying “You shouldn’t worry.” She wasn’t dismissive of the new daughter-in-law or the wedding, by saying something like, “We don’t need to keep talking on and on about the wedding.” She didn’t make a comparison by saying something like, “We’ll always love you more” or “You’re our favorite.”

She said exactly what my friend needed to hear, and it was meaningful, because it was true.

They will always have a special place in their hearts for Jill.