photo © 2008 Jennifer Moo | more info (via: Wylio)


Please note:  I do not struggle with keeping things confidential.  I'm good at withholding information and, when needed, tiptoeing around the topics at hand so people aren't sure what it is that I know.  There have been times that persons who have shared difficult parts of their lives with me have ASSUMED that I went home and told my wife everything.  This has led to a couple of awkward conversations where the other party talked with my wife as if she already knew whatever it was that was confidential.  But I don't tell her anything I haven't been given permission to tell her.  And, frankly, sometimes it's easier just not knowing.

I know that confidentiality is important to protect folks.  It's important to maintain a level of trust so that folks feel comfortable coming to me with their struggles and hurts and celebrations.

However, what I find burdensome is knowing so many things about persons lives...their issues with their parents, their health, their marriages, their jobs and kids.  I've been around long enough that I've seen a lot and shared a lot with persons.  I don't think it's a matter of treating them differently.  I think it's a matter of me trying to share in their burdens.  I hurt because they hurt.  I really do.  Sometimes my heart just breaks for persons I care about as pastor and I then need to carry that burden, confidentially, with little chance fo me to unload my burden anywhere in the local community.

I appreciate the intimacy I get to have with folk.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't want to be "an island" and remove myself from those times.  I have found the dark, lonely, hurting places I've been with persons to be very holy times, filled with God and affirming my calling in ministry.  I have often said that, at death scenes in particular, I feel most pastoral.  Maybe that's because I feel God most at work and me most relying upon God.  I don't know.

I just know I need to share, too and I try to do that in such a way that my own baggage is revealed and not the baggage of the person I've been in dialogue with.   I thank God for those places in my life where I've had persons ready to help me bear the load.
  
Empathy can be a difficult thing when the sadness or pain of those around you is carried by you.  It was John Shirley who said, "I am cursed with empathy."  There are days I resonate with that and I need to take care of myself.