I wouldn't be Deanna Troy for the world

So what if she's pretty, has a cool accent, gets to parade around a spaceship and simply talks to a wall whenever she wants something to eat? She has a crazy mother.

Plus, empathy hurts.

It's a strange phenomenon, that bane of a gift (disclaimer: for the few of you who even know to whom the title refers, i'm not so geeky as to be contemplating her literal "gift" here...just the real-world counterpart). Anyone with strong empathetic tendancies knows of the dichotomous nature of the thing--that strange absorption of thought and feeling that can further help a person to serve well, to pray well, and yet can bring about a wash of heartache as real as if it were originally one's own.

From the Latin, sympathy means "to feel with," but empathy literally means "to feel into." I think that's an accurate distinction...it's one thing to feel sorry for someone for a moment and then go about your way; it's a very different (and much more invested) experience to have an intensely internal perception and appreciation of another's burden, however that happens to come about.

I remember my pastor once saying that empathy generally comes either from a sharing of similar experiences, or from an already-existing closeness between people; and sometimes it's both. I would think everybody experiences it to some degree, but I wonder if God builds a stonger sense of empathy into some people than into others? (that's the thought I come from, if it wasn't obvious...) Is it a personality thing? A spiritual gift? All of the above?

I couldn't wish it away, 'cause as for myself, at least, it's just a part of who I am.

Not that it means I'm so used to it that I always know how to handle it. Have you wept because of what someone was going through? Have you found yourself frustrated because you would comfort, you would offer insight, but the words fail? Have you literally cried prayers because you didn't know what else you could do?

What we're supposed to do with all that, I don't yet know. I'm still waiting for God to show me that one. Along with, oh, most everything else in my life...but who's counting.. :)