The Gift of Compassion

Thanks to Kimson Doan @kimsondoan for making this photo available freely on Unsplash 🎁

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Henri Nouwen

She was the strongest person, I knew with the exception of my Nonna, she’d been no stranger to tragedy or abuse, but she never stopped believing in God’s grace, but like everyone she could build walls, walls that hid those broken places, the pain went far deeper than the amputations, the transplants, it was soul deep.

I’d learn later of the abuse she had experienced, loosing contact with her briefly as she and her young son escaped, and though I try not to one who hates, the more I learned my disdain for this man, I had never met grew, the pain evidence in the words she tried to hide.

But I’ve always been persistent when it comes to breaking down walls, when it comes to showing others it’s okay to let yourself feel, that does not mean your life is ruled by those emotions love, but it helps to build Friendships, it grows the bond of sisters and in a short matter of time, that was who we…