The other day, I was really hurt by someone.
As I lay in bed, crying, instead of feeling upset at the hurt they had caused me, I was hurting for them.
Please don't see this as me saying that I am such a good person, which I am definitely not, because instead of being mad at them, I was sad for them. I just wanted to share a transparent, real moment with you.
As I laid there, I wished that God hadn't given me a compassionate heart. Because hurting for people, when you have your own hurts to worry about just, well…sucks.
On the Myers-Briggs personality test, I am an ESFJ (Extroverted, Sensing, Feeling, Judging). The world, as I understand and perceive it, is dominated by feelings, whether they are my own or someone else's. How I feel about something will affect the way I deal with it, and my actions.
I cry on emotional parts of movies. I cried watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy where an elderly man lost his wife and was trying to resuscitate her. If there is a bug in the house (excluding roaches, ugh), I try to catch it in a cup and let it go outside. Compassion is definitely not a bad, or weak thing.
In fact, compassion is what led me to bring home those 4 tiny, dirty, orphaned kittens to foster from the shelter, it is why I cried for hours when 3 of them died one by one, and it is what led to us adding this adorable guy to our family.
"Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son, into the world so that we might live through Him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we must also love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:7-12)
In one of the notes in my study Bible for this passage, it says, "the standard of love is not what humans feel but what God has revealed in Christ's life and death on the cross."
As I was thinking about this, it dawned on me that a) I needed to get over myself about feeling "burdened" with other's hurts and that b) this is how God shows us His compassion. He just gives us a tiny little drop of His compassion, and through our hurting for others, He shows us how He hurts for us.
So, although it hurts sometimes, being compassionate is a gift from God. Not a weakness or just being emotional. And I think this will be used on the Race, and in missions after the Race. I will always be the person to cry in movies, hug the kitten, or get fired up about injustice, and I am thankful for it.
I feel like God has given me special glasses to put on, to see the world just a little bit the way He does. To see beyond the facades that we put on, to really see people and their hurts, and to take on a little bit of that hurt for them. It really is a picture of Jesus if you think about it.
And I wouldn't wish that away for the world.
