Let me be honest with you, I despise being in pain. While I have a high physical pain tolerance, I have a low (almost nonexistent) emotional pain tolerance and that is the pain that I hate the most. Yet as this new month begins, I feel my heart expanding to make the room necessary for it to handle pain.

Simply put, with God, I am learning how to exhibit grace in discomfort.

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How did I get here?

One day last week I arrived at work and began praying nonstop for God to please teach me empathy. With all of the budget cuts that are happening in my school district, a lot of extremely difficult decisions had to be made and every single person- student and staff- in our district felt the pain of the actions taken in an attempt to reduce our $49 million deficit and achieve a balanced budget. It has been beyond painful and many days I found myself numb to all of the pain around me. But on that particular day at work, I realized that I no longer wanted to be numb- I wanted to feel the pain because if I felt the pain, then prayerfully I could help others find healing from their pain. (To be clear, my numbness was not the absence of care and concern, but presented as me sharing facts in times when empathy was needed.)

As I walked through the halls of my job that day, I found a reading plan in the Bible app that helped me better understand the importance of empathy. I’ll be honest, I don’t have a lot to share here today, as I’m still navigating all that I have learned. Yet what I do know is that empathy requires being uncomfortable (more on that next week).

Beloved, today I have one request of you- get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
(Yeah, I’ll explain that more next week.)

Be blessed.