When life is so good—when everything, for this moment in time anyway, is calm and undisturbed and we think we detect an encroachment of actual joy—that is when we sit back and ask, of our previous anguishes:
“What was that all about?”
And we marvel.
But when we encounter others in that very anguish—although it is never the same as ours in the details—we remember.
Their pained expressions, incredulity and tears immediately take us back to our own, and we remember.
And we have compassion.
I believe it can be no other way.
And this compassion is not for ourselves all over again.
It is not to recite to the grieving, shocked person the details of our own previous trials: that is a mistake many make.
The compassion that comes to us by God teaches us His walking us through the valley (Psalm 23:4); His assurance that He gets it (John 11:35): His acknowledgement that we are hard pressed on every side (2 Corinthians 4:8) through His Spirit of Christ in us (Romans 8:26).
God’s transformation of us through affliction removes all self-centeredness in our bearing with one another.
Certainly there are folks who mean well.
They strive to “be there” and say encouraging words. They may bring food. They have their place.
But so often they fall into the temptation of Job’s friends and speak of things they do not know, or lack an intuitive sense for the state of the afflicted and their situation.
Those who have truly been brought low, in contrast—and humbled and matured by it—only those who have had the rug literally pulled out from under them in a catastrophic and un-imagined way and are literally left reeling—void of every previous capacity to control or cope (dysfunctional or not)—they are the ones we cherish and wish could sit with us in our dark hours.
Because they, too, not only have been there but they were changed. They didn’t bury the trial under the rug. They didn’t rise up in platitudes. Their pride was afflicted in addition to everything else, with a good outcome there.
They are the ones who no longer can even begin to pretend to feel what others feel, because they know it isn’t possible.
And when we, the suffering, perceive this, we relish their silence at our bedside; their company on long walks; their companionship.
There is a sense of being equals--comrades, as opposed to the "helped" and "helper."
Pure and unadulterated compassion carries a sixth sense for intuitive response and silence, led by a previous pain that doesn’t claim to comprehend our own.
Those of true mercy show up, absent of posturing that they possess answers and expertise on recovering from something they have no experience with.
They follow the lead of God and the afflicted and check themselves at the door.
This is how God uses our miseries. He turns them into tenderness.
So then, someone else can endure heartache and sickness, not alone, and not alone with another soul who means to say all the right things but can’t—but with the person who God has already taken through the mess and brought out to the other side.
That is the use of the train wreck moments or years of our life: to grow in the knowledge and love of the Lord so that we can simply show up when another life derails.
Copyright Barb Harwood
“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted
And saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
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