Gratitude

Thismorning I sat with my neighbour in the gutter. His family, and in fact our whole street, have been moved from here to make way for more developments. Everyday he takes a bus and a tram to come have a beer outside his old house, contemplating the days when he could sit on his front porch and have a coffee with anyone in the street. Everything he has ever known has changed around him. Everything.

As I looked at the trail of beer cans a thought came to mind. This could have been me. So many times I've felt that everything around me has changed and I am standing there like a deer in headlights. The past few weeks have been heavy and my failings have been displayed in front of my eyes continually. Oh and I've been saying goodbyes again.

When you've been in ministry for most your life, spending most days checking up on how people are doing, it's sobering to realise that only a handful of people do the same back. But just thismorning one of them did. In a moment when I was feeling my lowest I got a call. "I had two mins on my way to work and wanted to see how you're doing." I actually didn't get to tell her how much that 2mins meant - I just took in her voice, knowing those were words straight from the heart of God.

I have many things to be grateful for and I refuse to let those moments be stolen away to make way for all the crushing thoughts instead. Not today. Today I want to be grateful.

Broken Empath

Earlier I posted about a young man who regularly "tags" the bridge near our house. I saw him out and about again the other day and then saw this newly painted message - "broken empath." It struck me because I've been thinking a lot about how important it is to be able to walk in people's shoes, so to speak. To feel what they're going through and seek to understand why they do what they do. To be empathic.

But what happens when our ability to do this is broken? Maybe we've felt people's pain or brokenness so deeply that it's pushed us to our limits and we cannot go to that place anymore.

I don't have any clean and tidy answers to that question. I am constantly encountering brokenness in others but whenever I'm tempted to feel more together I'm reminded of my latest or greatest faults and the empathy flows in bucket loads.

I've been in that place of being a "broken empath" as well. It was a dark place, where all I could think of was survival and holding back from hurting myself or others. When everyone around feels like an enemy or indifferent, it's difficult to know up from down. Thankfully the one Constant in my life was exactly that and He gently showed me the diamonds in the rough until I could trust again.

We all have our strengths and blaring weaknesses but if we're going to do anything together with others in this world we need to know those diamonds are worth all the cuts and bruises it takes to find them.