he had compassion on them

I honestly didn’t think I would ever use this blog again, but I have a word I really want to share, and I don’t know a better place to do it. So I think I should just write it and not worry if anyone cares or wants to read it.

I’ve been feeling a lot lately - more than I’d like to both experience and admit. But alas, we can’t control how we feel. I’m in a feeling season and I’ll be open about it.

I spend most days caring for my grandparents, as my grandmother has brain cancer and my grandfather has other various health concerns. And in many ways, it’s beautiful. As people keep reminding me, “This is time that you’ll never get back.” It is precious, it is good, it is beautiful! But the beauty of it doesn’t detract from the difficulty of it.

I’m realizing a lot about myself that I didn’t know before. I’m realizing that, shoot, maybe I need to learn how to better care for people. I think there was a time when I thought I was good at that, but I don’t know if I actually am.

This is stretching me to care for people so much more holistically than I’ve ever needed to before. It is challenging and it is stretching and sometimes, or even a lot of the time, I’m not that great at it! (Which actually makes so much sense why the Lord would call me into it!)

I’ve been having a lot of selfish thoughts about how I would have maybe wanted my life to look like right now. You know, doing the young professional thing - having a new 9-5 job, loving my new 9-5 job, having a social life, living in a new apartment with a few quirky roommates, becoming best friends with those quirky roommates - that sort of thing. What you typically expect from life as a 22 year old. (Or maybe that’s just me.)

But that’s not in the cards for me right now, for so so many reasons. The biggest reason being what’s going on in my family.

I didn’t even realize I had these expectations for myself until I wasn’t meeting them, and it wasn’t even a possibility to meet them. I didn’t realize how badly I wanted my life to look that cookie cutter, 9-5, financially-stable way. And this is not at allllllllll to say that that lifestyle is “bad.” There is nothing wrong with it, and part of me still longs for it right now. But I had to come to accept the fact that that’s just not where God has me or wants me right now. It doesn’t matter that I want it for myself - where He has me is where I should be and what He has for me is always better than what I have for me.

But oof is it hard! Sometimes it is really hard. And these last few weeks have been particularly hard. The honeymoon phase between me and my grandma is ceasing - the veil has been lifted, and we get frustrated with each other sometimes, as humans do. But also, seeing her so tired sucks. Knowing that she never feels 100% good or healthy or herself SUCKS. I can bring her all the gatorade in the world, but this tumor is still unkind and will continue to be unkind to her.

I think God is teaching me a lot about pain, and a lot about compassion. I’ve been really stuck on this passage in Matthew 14, where Jesus had just received news that one of His friends, John the Baptist, has been beheaded. For NO logical reason whatsoever. And straight up, Jesus is sad. He just is. I think sometimes I forget the humanity of Jesus. Like, His friend had just died and He was sad. That’s human and that’s awful.

So Jesus is sad - right? Super sad, and He wants to go be by Himself, as would most people who are grieving, right? But people heard Him and, “followed him on foot from the towns.”

Can you imagine being in the deepest mourning of your life and some group of strangers just starts following you?

I think I would lose my mind. I think I would lose my cool. I think I would tell them that their pain can’t compare to mine in that moment, and I would like to be left alone so I can process this news and CRY. “Please, don’t bother me with your sadness right now so I can focus on my own,” I think I would say.

The other day, I had a moment where I did just that. My sister was having a bad day, too, and I didn’t have the heart to cheer her up because I was resting in my own pain. I was telling myself the lie that my pain was on a different level than her pain, and in my pain, I couldn’t do anything to make her feel better. I said, “My pain right now is too good for you. Sorry.”

The worst thing is, I could see that I was doing it. I could feel how wrong I was. I could feel the selfishness within me boiling up. I could feel the enemy delighting in my lack of compassion for my sister - literally the most important person in my life, and I was essentially telling her that her sadness was unimportant to me.

That’s evil. That’s unloving, unkind, un-everything-Jesus-ever-was-and-stood-for.

So what did Jesus do when He saw that crowd following Him? What did He do in His time of deepest mourning?

“When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”

He had compassion.

compassion noun

com·​pas·​sion | \ kəm-ˈpa-shən \

sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it

That’s starkly different from what I had for my sister in that moment. He never put His pain on a scale to prove that it outweighed the people who were following Him - because He saw pain as relative and human and terrible, no matter what it was for.

And He came to heal, not to ignore. In His deep sadness and suffering at the loss of a friend, He chose to heal the sick. Not to say that His pain was too good for them. Not to say that the cross He would have to bear could never compare to what they felt.

He was compassionate. And this is a story and a word I want to hold close to my heart and forever in my mind. When I start to believe that my pain warrants a withdrawal from loving others, I want to remember this story and recognize that something is wrong within my heart that needs to be dealt with. Immediately.

So I think God is teaching me about compassion in this season - about having compassion for others, not just in spite of my pain but because of my pain. Never to let how I feel keep myself from seeking to know how others feel and offering them the love they deserve.

But God is also teaching me about pain, and what it looks like to be comforted by Him. He’s been reminding me in little ways that I’m not meant or able to feel this all on my own, and He actually longs to feel this with me. I’m shaking my head at that. What kind of God does that.

Thank goodness He is patient and loving and merciful. We’d be so screwed without Him - and I think I would be so particularly screwed up without Him.

Tell me how I can be praying for you - and I really mean that. I think God is challenging me to give up selfishness in a lot of areas, prayer definitely being one of them.

For what do you need compassion in your life right now? How can you be inviting the Lord and/or others into that?

Love and appreciate you all so much. Thank you for having patience with me.