Enlarge My Heart (Part 2)

If you missed Part 1, you can read it here.

About a year ago, I was having one of my typical nerdy conversations with my friend Jordan. I love her mind. Per our usual, we were discussing books that we found insightful and she mentioned “StrengthsFinder”. The book discusses 34 common talents and offers an online component to assess a person’s top five strengths.

And that was all I needed to hear.  I went out and bought the book the next day.  (On a side note, the fourth strength on my list is called “input”.  That I immediately went out and bought the book demonstrates this strength and confirms the assessment is legit. Hah.) I was so excited to see what my top strength would be and thought it had to be a mistake when I learned my primary talent was empathy.

So lame!

I totally thought the assessment was going to reveal something cooler and so I initially reacted in disappointment. Like most of us, I failed to appreciate this quality in myself. I thought it was a stupid gift, second only to the gift of singleness.  Perhaps to some degree that is because my gift has felt more like a liability at times…as though sensitivity is something one needs to overcome and not embrace. Consequently, I didn’t really recognize the value of what has been entrusted to me.

But, the more I learn, the more intrigued…and the more thankful I become. I no longer apologize for my emotions…because I am no longer sorry that I have the ability to feel.Yes, I am overwhelmed by my feelings at times. Sometimes it’s awesome and sometimes it means feeling the deep angst of pain, even when it technically belongs to someone else. But it is truly a gift. And I am finally ready to receive and enjoy it.

 

 (Disclaimer:   I believe we have a responsibility to steward our gifts well, and as such recognize that praying for and operating in wisdom/discernment as we do so is imperative. I’m not advocating for letting our emotions dictate our decisions, based solely on the fact that we do or do not feel a particular way.)

 

According to research conducted by my new favorite person whom I haven’t actually met (Brene Brown), empathy is practically an emotional super-food.  To my surprise, it’s actually a very useful gift.  Empathy is a fundamental aspect to every healthy relationship, because it’s a connecting emotion…it seeks understanding.  To echo Pastor Jamie George, “Empathy is the ability to project oneself into someone else’s narrative and see the world they see it. If you have a connection problem, you have an empathy problem…which probably means you have a listening problem.”

When we are willing to embrace the discomfort of vulnerability, we start to create an environment where it is safe to be our true selves, flawed though they may be. Without it, we will never achieve the intimacy we desire because “we can only be loved to the degree that we are known” (John Ortberg).  It takes courage to actually look at our own messes and even more courage to share our stories with other people.  And yet, our stories are gifts to each other because “each one of our stories is connected to an even greater love story of redemption” (Jamie George).  And so often, the courage to tell our own story is the very thing that gives other people permission to share their stories too.

This whole post is reminiscent of a sermon I heard about the significance of remembering and how it is linked to empathy.  In Exodus 3:7, we see that remembering is not a passive activity.  When God remembered his people and how they were suffering, it signified that he was about to act on their behalf. His redemptive plan was about to be enacted.  In other words, when God sees the afflictions of his people, his “eye affects [his] heart” (Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible).

I wonder what our lives would look like if our remembering someone’s affliction actually meant we were going to do something about it. Hebrews 13:1-3 urges us to do this very thing:

Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

In other words, the purpose of our remembering is so that we will empathize. If we are empathetic to those in need, we become connected to each other. We become more invested in each other’s lives and more available to play a bigger part in the redemptive story God is telling with our lives.

 

We have so many opportunities to remember and empathize in our broken and afflicted world. This month, I will be using my blog to partner with Compassion International and share the stories of so many hurting children that need our help.  Please consider checking out their Sponsor a Child page and praying over the children. Our goal this month is to remember 3,108 children and encourage those who are willing and able to become a sponsor.

This is simply one opportunity to climb into someone else’s story and feel what they feel.  I’m not trying to coerce you into anything. I’m just inviting to you listen to someone else’s story and be available, should God prompt you to help in this particular way.  It is my prayer that our eyes would affect our hearts and that we would have the courage to do something when it does.

Maybe that will look like sponsoring a compassion child. Maybe it will look like a hug for a friend who has been going through a really difficult time. Or maybe it will look like courage to finally tell your story and believe that God will use it someway, somehow.  I don’t know what your specific assignment will look like, but I know there is no shortage of opportunities. Lord, help us remember, so that we will empathize and imitate you.

Once upon a time, the embodiment of love, channeled empathy into physical form.  (Jamie George)

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

-Hebrews 4:15-16

Give us ears to hear and enlarge our hearts as we listen.

Loneliness

So, I am sitting in Starbucks, writing.  Basically because I have nothing else to do and am feeling pretty isolated from other people…so I figured I should get out…and at least be AROUND other people, even if I am not directly engaged in conversation with them. And just to entertain my fellow Tuesday morning book-clubbers, the following sentence is written in your honor, the only other people who will understand what it means and appreciate resulting the mental picture: I am toying with the idea of pulling a “skinny-john-the-people-hugging-hipster” on some unsuspecting Starbucks patrons. But, I am fairly certain I will behave instead.*

* I reserve the right to change my mind, in the event that I meet someone worth harassing, in a very loving way, of course.

I guess this post is going to be super unpredictable. But then again, that’s how I roll. I suppose I never know what I am going to write until I actually start writing…and it often surprises me to learn what has been on my mind. So I guess I will just start somewhere and see where we end up.

I have a tendency to retreat inside my own mind when I am left alone for too long. And I don’t think that is a bad thing altogether. I have simply had a bit too much time to myself lately, and it is starting to get to me. I am an extravert and as much as people do not believe me when I say it, I can only handle so much togetherness before I get “people-d out”. I love spending time with people but even I have a breaking point when it comes to socializing. And the older I get, the more I appreciate alone time, silence, and time to just “be” with God…the more this time away to reconnect and recharge has become a necessity. So, though I am a huge proponent of alone time, I have just had a whole lot of it and hardly any interaction with other people to help balance it all out.

And that got me thinking yet again about our tendencies to live in one extreme or another, and how living in either extreme is problematic. Both distort our sense of relationship/connectedness to some degree…at least that has been true in my life. When I get caught up in all the busyness of life, I can get too focused on the “doing” and completely ignore the “being”. At times, I have spent far too much time conversing with other people and listening to their perspectives, to the detriment of spending time with God and listening to His perspective…the only one that matters anyway. During those times, I often feel the strain on my relationship with Jesus and as a result, I become increasingly disconnected from my own life (or feeling somewhat robotic, moving from task to task without thinking about the reason I do the task in the first place). Is it any wonder that this state, which my mother refers to as “burning both ends of the candle”, eventually leaves me feeling burnt out?

On the flip side, spending too much time alone can mess with my mind too. When I spend too much time by myself, and hardly have any human contact, I can easily slip into a depressive funk and become increasingly unmotivated to do anything. Recently, my pastor used a phrase that I feel perfectly describes that state as“numbing loneliness”. During times of loneliness, feelings of being disconnected are powerful, and often distort our perspective by placing too much attention our unmet emotional needs.

Now I know that without a connection to God, no one will ever have their emotional needs met. I am not questioning that, nor am I suggesting that we should look to other people to “fill” us. Instead I am wondering…

to what degree are relationships, not only a good thing, but necessary for our well-being?

For example, God created us with physical needs (e.g. to eat, hunger) and he provided a way to meet that need (food). But the Bible also says (in Deuteronomy 8:3 and again in Matthew 4:4), that “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”. Clearly, we are dependent upon God and He is our source (Romans 11:36) and our sustenance. And although we do not live on bread alone, or although we do not live exclusively by physical fulfillment of that need, we do indeed also live on bread that God provides for us to meet our very real, human need for physical nourishment. He has created and established “human-ness”… one aspect of which includes living in physical bodies and where eating food is an integral part of how that system was designed to operate.

I think we (Christians) tend to overlook the fact that we also have very real emotional/relational needs as well…to the point that we feel guilty when we recognize that we have them because we think that if we just loved God enough, we wouldn’t have that need to connect with other people as well. But, I think we have emotional/relational needs because we were created that way. God created humans in His likeness and God is so intimately connected with the Trinity, that they are One (Mark 12:29). God is also in relationship with us, not because He needs us, but because He chooses to be in relationship with us…which in and of itself is a mind-boggling concept.

So, it makes complete sense that we, being made in his image, would also be made as relational beings. Our most intimate relationship is with God; the greatest commandment is to love the Lord God with all our heart, soul and mind (Luke 10:27). And God is the only One with whom total relational intimacy is possible because He is the only one who knows us fully anyway (1 Corinthians 13:12). So, again, I am in no way implying that we do not need to be in relationship with God or that we should elevate human relationships above our relationship with God. I am simply saying we are relational beings and were not made to do life in isolation and that just as God often gave us food to meet our physical needs, He also gave us other humans as a way to meet our emotional needs.

Moreover, I think God gave us emotional needs and human relationships to point to a greater relationship…one with Him. Our earthly relationships, at least in their ideal state, offer us glimpses into the heart and character of God. I have learned so much about God through human relationships and the more I learn about God, the more I see how he ordered human relationships to mirror aspects of Himself, that we may know Him deeper.

God, I thank you for your promise that you will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), even during seasons of loneliness. I thank you that you have made us to be in relationship with you and I thank you for your faithfulness. I thank you also for human relationships and the privilege of “doing life” with other people and for love that never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8).