Empathy

"This is not who you are," Maha once told me. It May of 2003. I wasn't going to be back for 6 months. Life was getting back to normal. Cancer, I thought, had been defeated. Even then, back in the days before "metastatic" was applicable, I wanted to see about volunteering, helping other patients in some way. I wasn't sure why......why was I drawn to a place I had so desperately never wanted to be in the first place? My ever-wise doctor suggested that I needed to step back from the whole intensity of surviving the previous two years, take my Tamoxifen, live my life. I tried. I gave it my best shot.

My best shot wasn't good enough and it turned out Maha was wrong. We spoke of this just our last visit. I am now the face of chronic breast cancer. It is who I am. Part of who I am, anyway. Kathy, the faithful Christian, the wife and mother, the one who has been fighting for over seven years....the metastatic odds-beater. If you know me , you know cancer is part of my story. And the feeling of needing to speak to those who are in the fight, the need to be among those in the battle, has only intensified with the more I have experienced and seen. I am so drawn to the cancer patient......to want to tell them stories......to want to hold their hand....to want to say "I know, I know."

And that's what this is all about.....I do know. I want to sit next to them and comfort them all because I know. I know their fear, anxiety, pain, sickness, horror, disbelief, heartache, heartbreak, and depression. I know the feeling that life is spinning away, out of control, with no way to stop....no way to get off the bus that is about to careen over the cliff. I know that nothing is more valuable than someone who can give you hope, cheer you up, and buck you up. To sum it up....I have empathy. True-blue, I have walked in your shoes empathy.

Because of cancer, because of the grace and mercy of God, I have been given empathy. So strong is my empathy, that when they told the congregation just yesterday that the church secretary's daughter had just been diagnosed with kidney cancer, it immediately brought me to tears and to my knees. The scans, biopsies, pathology and protocol are just beginning and knowing what I know, it made my heart hurt. She and I talked at length when church was over.
She thanked me for my advice, my wisdom (me?) and my encouragement. It was what God
intends for me to do. He has given me empathy.

The girls at the office know. They know that if I see someone who might need a drink, a blanket, a word, a touch...I will leave my chair and pull up a stool. I don't think twice...it is who I am.
The real kicker to all this??? Empathy was never in my vocabulary before cancer came along.
Neither was compassion. Now, I am dripping with both, but strangely, really only for those like me. Fighting the fight. I never liked the "cancer is a gift" saying. Makes me want to punch someone in the nose and it is always said by someone who has never been told they have it.
But with the disease, God does some great things and unexpected gifts do come. God turned me around and made a malignant narcissus into one with empathy for malignancies. Ha! How cool is that? If you had known me before cancer, you would find this empathy quite amazing. The gifts from God always are.

"Be kind and compassionate to one another..." Ephesians 4:32