Maybe the heart is protecting itself

I received this message from someone some time ago:

“I met this lady in a church community in Abuja. She was very friendly. I later found out that she was married but lost her husband within one year of marriage. She was pregnant, and the baby died at birth. She later got a job with a bank. They went out one day and had an accident; she broke her waist and now limps. She lost her job and couldn’t get anything reasonable again.

“She attended my wedding, and I had to foot her bill for coming. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the sad tales following her around. She started her master’s degree, finished it and relocated to another state. I was happy and felt relieved when she told me about the new job.

“I woke up two days ago to find myself added to a WhatsApp group named after her. They were narrating her health issues and asking for donations. I called her, and she said she had cancer. She sent me photos of her breasts and told me she’s been through hell and high water.

“The breast is practically decayed. I have just sent in my donation, but I am so afraid of her. I feel guilty, but I kept wondering how one person could be that unfortunate. I don’t know what to do; I am so afraid of her, and I am emotionally traumatised. I have never met a human like this one. I hope I am not being a bad person for wanting to run away from her.”

From Oby…

I did not know how to address this issue at the time, but I remember telling her that the best way to handle such situations is to always imagine for a minute that you are the one in the other person’s shoes and then treat them exactly how you would want to be treated.

Something that happened to me recently made me re-examine my feelings about the message above.

A few years ago, a double tragedy befell my family (within a space of five months). When the second incident happened, I called a childhood friend and was crying as I relayed the incident to her over the phone.

She was lamenting and trying so hard to console me, but I could also sense her eagerness to “run away” from the phone. And quite unlike her, she didn’t call me for days.

Recently, someone dear to me called me in the night to inform me about the tragedy that befell his family. This was barely three months after we thought we were going to lose him to a dreadful health challenge. While he spoke, I realised that I didn’t want to stay on the phone any longer.

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As soon as the call ended, the little voice within said to me, “Are you running?” I repeated the same question to myself, and what came to mind was this – maybe it’s my heart that’s just tired of all the sad news and wanted a respite!

The heart is never quite prepared for any sad news at all, but when it gets hit by one sad story after another, when it is yet to recover, it becomes flighty. And it can remain in that state of ‘running away’ if one does not make a conscious effort to call it back with courage.

What helped me in this situation is that when the disturbing thought occurred, I prayed for the individuals involved, and then a day after, I reached out to them.

If this hadn’t happened to me, I would not have understood what was happening to this lady and my childhood friend.

Sometimes, when people fail to handle your sad moment as you expected them to, do not begrudge them about it.

There are times the heart is too tired, frightened or overwhelmed to act with care; it just wants to run away from all of it. Psychologists call it ‘compassion fatigue.’ Maybe it’s the heart’s way of protecting itself.

When faced with the sad realities of others, my suggestion is still this: imagine yourself in the other pair of shoes and then act accordingly.

At such moments, keeping people in your prayers also cloaks you with peace.

By now, most of us have been sadly touched by the reality of life in one way or the other, so we keep making ignorant conjectures about the situations of others.

I loved doing hospital visitations (where I go to leave words of encouragement with the sick), but I stopped doing that a long time ago.

One often left those spaces with more burdens than I left home with, after observing the suffering of humanity. You can just get home and become sad. And that feeling can take hours to shake off!