Sensitive Subjects
I’ve always been sensitive. As a child, I was also a dorky little thing – as evidenced by my beaver-like front teeth, frizzy hair, oval glasses and, later on, braces to boot. (For a while, all these traits were piled on top of one another; I know … yikes!) To top it all off, I was a worrier to the core.
As you can imagine, these qualities did not mesh well. When a peer would make fun of my appearance, shyness or anxiety, I would dip into self-consciousness that only propelled my worrying, and the cycle would self-perpetuate. It wasn’t pretty (no ugly-duckling pun intended).
As a result, I expended far too much energy wishing my personality away. Why couldn’t I be exuberant and casual, instead of taking everything to heart? Why couldn’t I just be fun? Life would surely be a lot easier that way. Sometimes, I still let this sensitivity get the better of me.
However, a lovely book has been helping me change my perspective. During Lent and the Easter season, I’ve been reading Michael Gaitley’s 33 Days to Merciful Love: A Do-It-Yourself Retreat in Preparation for Consecration to Divine Mercy. By consecrating myself to Divine Mercy (a la St. Therese of Lisieux), I recognize that Jesus’ heart is burdened by the excess of mercy in his heart that he longs to give – but that we reject. So, I ask Jesus to give me that rejected mercy, that I may be transformed by it and share it with others.
In the course of my consecration preparation, Gaitley pointed out a “catch” inherent in making the consecration: “To offer ourselves to Merciful Love is to let our hearts be more deeply moved by the suffering of others.” In other words, the offering renders me more sensitive to others’ needs, desires, and troubles.
Gaitley helped me realize what I had been too folded in on myself to realize before: my sensitivity isn’t the problem. How I was engaging with it was the problem. I had been directing my sensitivity inward, giving it the power to eat away at me. If, instead, I directed my sensitivity outward, I could begin to see it as a gift and a powerful tool for bringing God’s love to his little ones whom the world overlooks, spurns, and forgets.
In one of her most famous essays, author Marilynne Robinson talks about “the givenness of things.” To make an intricate and eloquent argument painfully short, Robinson argues that once we begin to see things as gifts from God, we can begin to appreciate their beauty and gratefully accept the mystery in which they are enshrined, rather than feeling the need to “solve” and remedy what we can’t understand about them.
If there are traits that we’ve seen as burdens, which we’ve allowed to fester and keep us from freedom and peace, we must ask ourselves: how can we redirect these traits toward furthering the kingdom of God?
If I insist that a propensity for anger is “just the way I am,” that may be the case – but may I direct that anger at the injustices that enslave my neighbors, and may I work to improve their plights, rather than directing that anger at the people I believe have wronged me. If I’m a shy person through and through, may my shyness inspire me to reach out to those who also seem too shy to approach a new group, rather than using my introversion as an excuse to let the lonely remain lonely.
God wants to give us His vision, but that doesn’t mean he wants to make us all alike – he wants us to see our personalities as conduits for His love and mercy. He wants us to combat what prevents us from loving and offer up the gifts we’ve been misusing for too long. Only in this way can our entire selves be given over to God and those He puts under our care.
