Today I am Writing: On the Circle or the Line (Compassion)

Recently I sat at a piano before a choir, and was asked to play my "part" for them to hear. I dove in, swirling my notes and bending my lines, until I realized: This is a lot easier with them than it is without them.

Turns out, our parts intertwine. I rely on their swoops to send my swoops swooping, I rely on their bends to send my bends bending.

Turns out, we were in it, together.

This has been a theme of late in my life, the learning to say "we're in it together" instead of "well now I've got to draw a line."

Each moment placed before me is a moment to either say, "I will draw this boundary line, because it is safer for my heart if you stay over there and I stay over here," OR to say, "No matter what you choose to do, I will draw this circle around us, and I will sit here, with you."

It's compassion, I think. I read that the Greek for "to be moved with compassion" is splanchnizomai, "and it's what we'd call guts. When Christ was moved with compassion, it's like He got kicked in the gut.*" (Emphasis all mine.)

"Who wants to be kicked in the gut?" I think, and then I realize:
Jesus did. Jesus does.

I see His compassion for me every day, when I'm weak and listing, when I cannot face what is in front of me to face, when the call to walk straight on through the very center of the burning cross feels like not at all what a wise person would choose with her head on straight.

I see His compassion for me every day, I feel Him, with me. Not telling me what to do, not changing my circumstance or my story; just with me. In His gut, compassion.

And I sit in a lecture on how our hearts get all broken up and how Jesus literally steps inside the moment with us, how His purpose is to heal us, with His very presence, His compassionate guts just oozing out all over the place. I sit in the lecture and I hear about this, and I know it is true, because I have seen it. For myself. For many many others.

I hear how our behaviors step right up and out of the lies we are believing as the only truth available to us. I think: It's compassion that asks not "what were you thinking?!" when the hurtful bad behavior comes, but asks instead, "what, dear heart, were you believing?"

Because if I can find out where the belief was sitting in that moment, then my heart can sit there too. My heart does not have to pull back, draw its line. My heart can say, "Here is the circle. You are in it, your belief is in it, and I'm in it, with you. We are in this, together."

And so the rejection moment happens, and I say:
I see where that comes from. I'm with you.

And the anger flashes; I'm with you.

Where the cold shoulder lingers, I'm with you, where the walls go up, I'm with you, where the active choice to disobey slices like ice,
I'm with you.

Because, don't you see? I'm talking about myself too.

Where every angry cold disobedient rejection wall has slammed against me, I have slammed it in my own time too. And then I've seen: Compassion.

If I draw the line, the one that feels like protection, I only draw it against myself. If I draw the circle though? Richness abounds.

Because Jesus always does what He says that He will do. Compassion always wins. But the line cuts me right off from the place where I get to see it, the breathing of life and light and every healing kind of Capital-T-Truth. The circle though? The "we are in this together" includes the "me" as well as the "you," getting to see with our eyes wide open: Compassion wins, for everyone.

(Emphasis heck yes, mine.)

*The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life, Ann Voskamp, p.230