Compassion

The greatest lesson I have ever learned is concept that has taken me years to understand. It is not only a concept, but something about myself that I have learned. Sometimes we feel things and the words needed to understand these things and explain them to others are elusive and not easily attained. But I’ve found often enough that once we put words to feelings, it results in a deeper understanding of ourselves, how we relate to the world and possibly reveals to us something about humanity as well.

It all began when I was 2 and I met a nurse by the name of Donna. I still keep in touch with her regularly 18 years after we first met. And there has always been something about her that struck me. Everyone who meets her, likes her instantly. She is gentle, kind, loving and nonjudgemental. Whenever I am around her I feel as though I am loved in my entireity, unconditionally. My physical disability, to her, is like an eyecolor and I get the feeling that she wouldn’t have me any other way. I have never heard her demean or put anyone down. She isn’t a person to be concerned about climbing social ladders or attaining wealth.

I have met other people that remind me of Donna in my life. One was a nun, the other, a director of a rape center near my hometown.

I met the nun my senior year in high school. I had gone away to a boarding school in D.C. and one of the requirements to graduate was to do an internship at a local business. My internship was at a center that helped mentally retarded and mentally ill Deaf people regain their autonomy. While there I did filing and other miscellaneous jobs that the secretaries needed me to do. And one day I was assigned to work with a Nun that did outreach and had a position at this agency. The whole day I helped her file downstairs in the basement. And while we worked, I noticed some things about her. She was patient while helping me figure out where the files should go and seemed to genuinely value the time she worked with me. And again, I got the feeling that she accepted me for who I was and that, to her, my disability was like an eyecolor.

The last person I met was only briefly for an hour or two over lunch at a house of one of my mom’s friends. She had been invited there to speak about domestic violence. Over lunch one of the people who attended the lecture asked her how she managed not to get burnt out. Her response was that her unwavering faith in Christianity gave her the strength she needed to keep continuing onwards in her job. And from here she went off on a tangent about a miracle which happened to her a few years ago in the hospital. At the time I hadn’t accepted Christ, and I was pretty skeptical about the validity of miracles, but seeing her eyes light up as she told everyone about it and the conviction with with she told it, made me believe what she said. There was something about her that I trusted, and I felt that through her job she was intent on making the world a better place. She believed that through her work she could heal the wounds which the Evil of humanity had caused.

The thing, which ties each of these people together…is one word. So simple, and yet it took me years to figure it out. Compassion. One. Word.

From each one of these people I’ve felt Compassion.

Wikipedia defines it as following: Compassion is a profound human emotion prompted by the pain of others. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another's suffering.

And I believe It is also summed up in John 3:16

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.”

God, felt Compassion for us. That’s why Jesus died, because he felt compassion for us. He wanted to allieviate our suffering, and so he died for our sins.

Compassion.

Such a simple word, and yet such a complex subject. For all these years…I’ve felt compassion, but I couldn’t put a name to it. And I knew deep down that what I felt was somehow connected to God, but I didn’t know how, until I realized it was embodied in Christ’s sacrifice for us.

When I feel compassion, I feel completely and utterly accepted and loved for who I am. And I believe, strongly, that this is how God feels about us, His children.

This is the greatest lesson I have ever learned.