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.

Advocacy

I remember when I first really understood advocacy. Maybe you remember when chip packets used to come with tokens in them called "Tazos" that were collected to play a game similar to marbles. You faced off with a partner, flicking your Tazo to knock theirs out of the ring. Winner collected the Tazo.

One day my friend saw that I'd consumed a packet of chips and asked where the Tazo had gone from inside. When she realised I'd thrown it out she was furious and yelled at me for not passing it to her. She felt I didn't care about our friendship because I should have known she would want to collect it. In that moment she ended our friendship. There was nothing I could say to convince her otherwise.

Shocked, I prayed about the situation. I told God I knew her change of heart would need to come from Him because I had given it my best shot. Well, we're still friends today, 24 years later, so something changed in her heart and she realised I could be trusted again.

It seems such a trivial situation now but the same concept has been repeated over and over in different forms ever since. I have always found that when I cannot explain situations myself, God can be trusted to step in and "advocate". Not always straight away, but eventually.

For the past 20 years I've been surrounded by a vast mix of different cultures, ages, and backgrounds in the people I've worked alongside. All carrying their own trigger-points in what makes them feel hurt or betrayed. For the life of me I cannot remember once wanting to harm someone and yet it happens...alot. Thankfully the Holy Spirit usually explains the situation to them much better than I can.

I don't know how I could navigate this life without the Holy Spirit constantly highlighting truth around me and in me. I can imagine that would have been a very miserable existance, especially when I think back to all the things I've been accused of 🤦‍♀️ These experiences have definitely given me a greater desire to believe the best motives in others. Sometimes I'm probably wrong and people really are doing things to purposely hurt me but I choose to believe those cases are few and far between!

When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.
John 15:26‭-‬27 NIV

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.