My daughter Rachel is the most empathetic person that I have ever known. So many times I have witnessed her feeling another’s pain more than the felt it themselves. It is hard to know how to help her through those times, but I have learned that prayer is the only way to be effective.

Feeling Your Heartbreak

Reblogged from Just a Jesus Girl

Empathy.

More than “Oh, I feel bad for you.”

No…

It involves something deeper than a perfunctory phrase.

I don’t pretend to be a psychological expert, but I do know that mingled in there is the ability to feel what your fellow man feels.

Or, at least, to understand it.

Something which is becoming a rare commodity these days, unfortunately.

You only have to tune in to television, scroll through social media, or just walk into the local grocery to see an appalling lack of thought for the other guy.

People spout impatient cruelty and knee-jerk opinions at one another, and call it “just speaking our minds”.

We pronounce judgments aplenty-and deftly excuse and defend ourselves from such.

Love is something that we indulge in for the warm fuzzies when it strikes our fancy, but quickly bypass when we encounter what we deem undeserving.

Easy to become desensitized. Far too easy.

And, for those of us who grieve the current status of the world, it can be a sad, dismaying burden indeed.

But, lest I just be a downer today, let me insert some slightly lighter truth in here.

For one, we don’t have to allow this ugliness to permeate our souls-when we choose to live in light of His grace.

And for those of us who feel grief over fallen mankind rather keenly, it can be a gift.

Grief a gift?

Yes, when we realize it is His grief we are being allowed to feel.

The Lord grants us the ability to see with His eyes that we might recognize the ragged need we all have.

For Him. For His incomparable cleansing. His extraordinary sacrifice. His matchless love.

It serves to stir compassion we would honestly not be capable of otherwise.

So…hard as it can be, I would much rather be able to feel His heartbreak than not.

I pray we all can tap into it more and more.

Blessings and prayers to you, dear friends! May we each live in light of His grace and allow His compassion for us to extend to our fellow man.