Compassion comes with a burden.
We don’t always feel the burden. Sometimes our enthusiasm and joy with serving and showing compassion overrides the feelings of burden.
But sometimes we have compassion and feel helpless, because we’re not sure what to do. Perhaps we’re not supposed to do anything in terms of fixing the problem. Showing compassion is sometimes simply sitting alongside and being available.
It still feels helpless at times.
However, we are never helpless in our compassion, because compassion is rooted in God and infused with his help. He is the source of compassion, and he is powerful and wise enough to know how it can and should be fulfilled. We have to accept the help God gives instead of trying to own and control all the help. We have to yield even when the approach isn’t what we would choose. We need to trust him.
The burden of compassion is ultimately God’s. He loves people way more than we can even imagine loving people. Plus, he has the power to do something about it. He’s inviting you to help by seeking and trusting him.
Feeling a bit crunchy at the moment. We survived the pandemic only to now be battling severe staffing shortages at our hospitals here. Nurses and other staff have left in droves. My own department is beleaguered with staff being off for the entire month of April for medical reasons, and a couple of vacant positions are not being filled by administration because our “productivity” is down…I.e, less phone calls since we are continually on diversion, meaning we are not accepting patients from other towns to our facility for transfer. In the meantime, our emergency rooms are overflowing, we have at least two full nursing units shut down, and are expected to still get patients out of the emergency room in a “timely” manner…hard to hang on to any feeling of compassion when we are constantly at odds with staff on the units and administration.
My mother in law passed away a couple of weeks ago, which has not helped my frame of mind. She had been on dialysis 2 years, but had fallen and broken her hip in February. Rehab was slow, but she was giving it her best effort even at 96. Then she started having bleeding problems because someone restarted a blood thinner which she had stopped taking last year due to bruising and having problems. Her last trip to the hospital was stressful; she had major internal hemorrhaging going on, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. There is no reversal agent for the particular medicine she was on. We find comfort in the fact that she is no longer in pain. But it was a frustrating time for sure.
I am weary.
I know this has been such an exhausting season for you. I am praying for you as you grieve, cope, and heal.