Empathy

In her comments to my last post, Fiona mentioned that her experience with infertility has made her more empathetic. This is a subject I have been pondering a lot lately. In fact, I already had a post titled "Empathy" half-written. So I thought I would share some of my thoughts.

As I was chatting with a friend the other day about having babies, she told me of a friend of hers who has had 7 miscarriages. Even though I don't know this woman, my heart hurts for her. Having been through one miscarriage myself, I cannot imagine the pain of it happening 7 times. It suddenly made me think that my fertility problems are not so bad. We have had one unsuccessful IVF, one successful IVF, and one miscarriage. But the idea of having the hope of 7 babies, and then losing each and every one, well, it's mind-boggling.

My experience with infertility has changed the way I look at the world. I find myself trying to be more aware when I'm teaching Relief Society lessons, or talking to my visiting teachees, or just chatting with a casual acquaintance. I recognize more now how painful different trials must be - being single must be very difficult, or losing a family member, going through a divorce, losing a job, having a life-threatening illness - the list goes on. There are a million things I never thought about before, but now I am very aware of the pain they can cause in the lives of other people. And that surely must be one of the reasons the Lord gives us trials. He wants us to be able to have empathy for others. Or, I guess you could say, charity. When you've had pain in your own life, it's easier to recognize it in other people, and it's easier to know what you can do to help them.

And I guess it's a good lesson for us to pay attention to those little promptings to do something for someone. You never know when you will be the person who is the answer to a prayer.