Do you feel alone, with not enough empathy coming from others? Spanning a large continuum of possible human responses, people have different natural levels of empathy. That is why some people are accountants and others are nurses. But in general, because all people are very weak and limited human beings, few people have enough stamina to continually pour out new expressions of empathy for long sustained trials, and at high levels of intensity hour after hour, in spite of deeply loving the person in acute need.
If a person has a repeated, frequent emotional or physical need that is of an extended duration, whether that be for just a few intense hours of crisis, or for a few days of great trial, or for years for a spouse or parent who has dementia, for example, the needy person may sometimes or even often feel a lack of steady empathy from those closest to him or her. Nonetheless, those close individuals may be full of very real caring, deep in their souls, including faithfulness in devoted praying and in love for this person who is important to them and connected to them — by God's design and by their personal commitment.
Only God himself houses infinite storehouses of empathy for each of His children and for each of their myriad specific and shifting daily lifetime needs. Sustained empathy requires a superhuman outlay of strength if the need extends for a protracted span of time. The expression of empathy may often be felt to be lacking or absent or shut off because it is so taxing for those who are expected to give it, to extend it, because they are already so taxed with just existing themselves. At some point anyone can run out of the endurance to deliver it due to their weakened reserves for even managing their own lives and their own inadequacies.
Therefore, what does the person who is needing empathy do? He or she learns to lean heavily upon God, who can (and will) sustain it. God gives wonderful encouragement in a steady, comforting nearness, in endless listening, in enlightening quickening of specific verses. He is ever present for us, through thick and thin. "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). "Always" means in the "infinite now," too. In every physical pain and in every psychological pain He is there in the trenches, actually feeling it with us. But only God can do that.
The last hours of dying, for example, have to be done alone, even if someone is in the room with the patient. A caretaker simply cannot feel every moment with the dying person, even though he or she loves that person deeply. People who caretake others for an hour or days or years may be tuckered out themselves, barely staggering through the day. The same with people who start out with limited psychological reserves from unfulfilled childhoods to care for the sporadic afflictions of someone else. Their own reserves may have never been built up and stored up enough for them to have extra to share much with others.
We all must strive to be a resource of divine empathy and love for others, but we do well to have no expectations for anyone to have it toward us. We must trust God with that reality. We gain comfort in going to Him in increased measure through all of life's difficult moments, and wonder of wonders, we find that God actually wants that growing dependency upon Himself, and Him alone. He has broad shoulders. Just as the government is upon His shoulders, so is all of our trial and pain. He is the place to expect it and from whom to receive it. For all of us, it is a surprising bonus if and when we receive any from human beings. But, bless God, there is no limit with His.
