When helping hurts and hurting helps

My thoughts are maybe worth a penny and no one has even given me that for them so far so take what comes next with that in mind. I first thought this should be shared by someone with more life experience than me and much wiser than me. But I am getting grey hair as of recently so maybe I’ve seen more than I think! 

I’ve been in a period of growth for a few years now and I think my views on life and my own mortality are only going to continue to evolve as I make more turns around the sun. When you are young you are invincible. Then something life altering happens and shifts your perspective astronomically. For me that happened in 2022 at 32 years old. But by 2025 I was already back to being somewhat invincible again. I’m active. I’m healthy. I’m young overall. Then you watch tragedy unfold again and again in the lives of others and it reminds you that death is no respecter of persons,  your fitness level or what you eat may help preserve your life but they don’t guarantee you a long one, and age means so much less than it should with death. 

Everyone is talking about the assassination of Charlie Kirk right now. It is a catalyst for my thoughts today but won’t be he won’t be the topic here. The topic instead is that this act was the moment following so many other tragedies that I could no longer stick my head in the sand when it comes to evil in the world. I know there is evil. I’ve not seen myself as a force to reckon with it. I have never denied there is evil but I’m also not going to be caught on a sidewalk shaking my Bible in the face of strangers. But, I am going to do something. Like this blog. Or the new cross necklaces I’m launching in the boutique. It’s not much but it’s what I can do. My days are numbered here on this earth and I need to start acting like it. God is continually putting opportunities in my path and if I won’t answer the call He will find someone who will. And then some day I will have to answer for the opportunities I had to serve him that I squandered. 

This is the reason I’m going to share something slightly more pointed than I ever have before. When helping hurts and when hurting helps. I don’t know who all reads this and where you fall on a religious/denominational/belief spectrum. What I do know as I watch society crumble around me is that so much of modern Christianity is treating compassion as THE gospel and the only gospel when compassion is one aspect of the gospel. As Christians, we serve a loving, merciful and compassionate God. We are made in His image and commanded to live Christ-like lives while on this earth. Compassion is absolutely an essential part of the equation. But it isn’t the sum and it has led to watered down teaching and living. We don’t want to offend. We are compassionate to your worldview or way of life before becoming a Christian. We need to be compassionate to the struggles of those in different lifestyles from us. And that is true. We should be kind in our communications and delivery.  No one should be treated as less than because they have a different gender, skin color, education, or socioeconomic background or even beliefs than you. Compassion means we help the misplaced from a flood find shelter, clothing, and food. Compassion says we take care of the fatherless. Compassion says we welcome the unwelcome and make a place at the table for them. But biblical compassion also looks to eternity. 

In the same way that diamonds are formed through a tremendous amount of pressure… In the same way that grief is a mental/emotional/physical process designed to help you cope and eventually recover from loss in your life…In the same way that children go through painful moments of growth as they get their teeth or their bones stretch and grow… the same way that you raise your children to become independent and eventually not need you to provide and sustain life for them anymore… Helping too much  hurts because it prevents the growth we need in life. And sometimes hurting helps us become resilient and cope better with our emotions and situations in life. 

So many areas in life are not black and white but they can also be a lot more dark grey than we let them be. 

I have been doing a Bible study which really is more of a daily reading guide. There are no leading questions or commentary. Just a passage to read in chronological order and a place to write your thoughts. And here is my biggest takeaway so far. God created man and set a design for what he wanted their life to look like but gave them free will to act of their own accord. Man broke that design and veered from His plan for us through sin. Consequences entered the world. Death entered the world. God spends chapter after chapter in book after book warning them of their sin and evil and telling them how to correct it and providing more warnings of what will happen if they don’t. This goes on and on and on and eventually God loses patience and they reap the consequences of their actions. And then they cry out to God begging him to have compassion on them and show them mercy. And he says no. And they blame him. Meanwhile I’m sitting here thinking he gave you 50-11 warnings this was coming. If a parent tells a child of enough age and mental capacity to understand consequences that they will go to timeout if they run into the street one more time and the child, having clearly heard this, runs into the street and then cries because he is in timeout- would you cry out to the parent to be more compassionate on the child and let him go, free to play in the street again? I could give this example in so many different scenarios of life but by focusing on minute details we sometimes miss the big picture. And if we could all get together on the big and most important picture then the tiny details of daily life and interactions might just fall into place naturally. 

Self righteous people get it wrong because they are not humble or compassionate enough to reach someone at their level/background/struggle. But this movement of compassion and love over everything else is also getting it wrong because we aren’t holding people accountable to the standards God has set and helping them grow through the pain of trying to reach those standards. 

If these thoughts seem unrelated, well they might be? The sheer volume and variety of thoughts that can pass through my brain in a 5 second span would scare some people. That’s why they are maybe only worth a penny at best.  But in case you are realizing you’ve been living as a lukewarm Christian, or if you’ve been on the fence or even on the other side of the fence but curious about Christianity- I’d encourage you to get serious and do some digging for truth. If you do it in sincerity then I’m convinced there is only one place you will end up and your life and eternity will be better for it. And it’s time for the rest of us to start speaking up for truth IN and WITH compassion. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. His compassion, mercy, love and patience is never ending for those living IN Him. But for those living in evil or ALLOWING evil to fester around them there is an expiration date. And it’s not helping someone if we are too scared to give that message because it might hurt a little bit. 

Someday I am going to die. And God is going to ask me to give an account of my life. And I absolutely want compassion to be something I practiced and to be acknowledged for doing. But I also can hear Him say, “Yea,  you were really loving and compassionate. So much so that you tolerated everything around you and never spoke out against evil being done to me or my children and that… hurts”.