Compassion Am I

I just realized that I want to be compassionate.  However, I don’t wish to just be compassionate, I want to be seen as compassionate.

I feel as if I have compassion at times, but I know that is not enough.  Anyone can feel for someone or something in a moment, but what does it really feel like to walk in compassion.  There is a difference between having compassion and being compassionate.  I know this, and even believe in this, but find it hard to live this…

I have lived a fair portion of my life not being compassionate or showing compassion, except at random moments where it seemed as if I couldn’t help myself… that it was someone else living my life through me.  I remember watching Extreme Home Makeover for the first time a few years ago, not really being engaged with the story but just watching the remodeling process at work.  Then, as the man rolled in to his new home in his wheelchair, and the kids were seeing not just a house but hope for the first time in a while, it happened.

I teared up.

I literally got up and walked into the kitchen thinking, “What is wrong with me?”  I didn’t know the people in the story and had watched the whole episode and not blinked and eye, but now I found myself feeling for those in the story.  It was different.

Not being a man of compassion for my whole life, yet now over the past few years desperately wanting to be that man, there are a few things that I need.

I need to be called compassionate.

I must have things spoken over me that are not, so that I am consistently reminded of the standard that I am striving for.  I see and feel the now all too often, and need to walk in what can and will be.  I need to not stoop to the emotion of the immediate circumstance and look for ways for love to flow and grace to overwhelm that circumstance.  I forget what I am reaching for too quickly, and I need someone to tell me (with an unending amount of compassion) who I am longing to be.

I need to be seen as compassionate.

If I don’t want to make those who are speaking compassion over me liars, I need to practice compassion.  I don’t want to be the guy whose funeral consists of the kindhearted saying good things over me and the audience sitting there saying, “I never knew that guy.”  What are the things that I can do that will show compassion.  I need to do them.  I want them to be seen not for my glory because of outside actions, but so I can be encouraged that I am gaining on my inward goal and winning the fight within that no one else sees but God and me.

I need to be compassionate.

It is more than about an act at a random time.  I must not just do compassionate acts, but be compassion.  It must become more than my ethos, it must become me.  In other words, compassion must be my default, my way of viewing the world around me.  I must live by the love that is thought of when we say things like “a little love covers a multitude of sins.”  Compassion that is there when it is not warranted.  That needs to be me.

Only by this compassion can I demonstrate who I want to be.

Honorable.  Loving.  Respectable.  Fearless.

By my God, my wife, and my boys.

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