Empathy

Definition: empathy - the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person's feelings

Emotional differences between Empathy and Sympathy
Sympathy essentially implies a feeling of recognition of another's suffering while empathy is actually sharing another's suffering, if only briefly.  Empathy is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes".  So empathy is a deeper emotional experience.

God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars. ~Elbert Hubbard

 

God blessed each of us with Spiritual Gifts.  There are times when I don't thank him enough for some of mine because they cause me more pain.  I am human and I don't like pain so many times I avoid it at all cost.  I think if I can distance myself from it the pain will go away. 

I took a personality test that identified my spiritual gifts and my top two are empathy and counseling.  I don't know the first thing about counseling, except that maybe I might need it at various times in my life.  The main problem I find with empathy is that I have the ability to literally put myself in the other person's shoes when they are going through pain.  What that means is that my pain is double if I allow myself to get close enough to people for them to open up about their pain.  I don't know any other way to describe it but that your heart bleeds for the other person.  You know that feeling you get when someone you love dies or is seriously ill.  The problem is when you open yourself up to a lot of other people's pain it can overwhelm you. 

Here is a glimpse of what I see in other people.  An empathetic person feels what the other person is feeling, which gives them a new experience about a new pain even if they have never experienced that pain before.  So the next person that comes along in pain gets the benefit of that experience from the empathetic person because they have lived it through someone else.  So when a friend tells me her husband comitted suicide, I put myself there and my husband there and I go through the emotional turmoil of what I would feel if that happened to me.  My own personal experiences will be even stronger because I have actually lived those.

Jesus was the best example I know of who had heavenly empathy.  He lived His short time on earth with some of the most broken people and he didn't avoid them as I sometimes do, he experienced them in their brokenness.  If I can use but a fraction of the empathy that God has blessed me with then I am thankful and I pray that he will use me more.


Prayer for the Day: Father you created each of us with spiritual talents that make us unique.  I don't always thank you enough for my gifts so please help me to understand that you gifted me with these talents for Your purpose.  I praise you for my spiritual gifts.  I want to end this life with many scars, the scars of others, because that will mean I will have a tiny glimpse of what Jesus is like and how to become more like him.  You gave your Son to die on the cross for my sins and he bears the scars to prove it. 

Scripture:   When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ³⁴ “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said. But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” John 11:32-40