Sleeves of Empathy

Where Do You Wear Your Bleeding Heart?

When I was growing up in Yuma, Arizona, my parents would shake their heads at me and lament, “Linda! You can’t always wear your heart on your sleeve!” I drove them crazy with my pleading to save this cat or that dog or once, a horned toad. I hated squishing ants and couldn’t stand to see those African famine pictures or even imagine a Chinese kid starving.

I was the family bleeding heart.

Between begging to take in stray animals and grieving for everyone less fortunate than I was, I started to notice something strange. I might not see the blessed virgin’s face like my Mexican playmates, but whenever my heart was weighed down, I felt as if Jesus was walking along beside me. I never smelled roses, only a faintly woodsy scent that I kind of liked. It made me feel loved, peaceful, secure.

That woodsy smell was odd—we lived in the desert. But it didn’t stop there. If I acted on my urges to help—say, give my best aggie marble to a kid who’d just lost his—a warmth would rise up from my toes and travel to the top of my head. It was like electricity but without fangs, a light so bright you could see veins mapped out up and down my lily-white limbs.

At first, I thought I was manufacturing sensations just to keep up with the Ramirez girls. My folks forbade me to attend their Mass, but the younger girl, Luna, liked to brag about all the ways the Virgin Mary visited her. Since I had to win any competition, I figured my subconscious wanted to impress the virgin, even though my church said all that was idolatry.

Naturally, I couldn’t tell my family about any of this. Most times, it happened after my heart bled all over my sleeve because someone’s mom couldn’t afford lunch money, or a student was snubbed by the popular girls. I was an expert at picking out suffering.

Why?

I knew what it was like to feel less than. Not normal. Picked last for teams or whispered about in gym class. I understood that no matter how smart I was, nothing could make up for my deformities. And since I lived with that kind of whitewashed rejection, I also lived with the guilt and shame that came with it.

Whitewashed rejection is a lot like whitewashed racism. My adoptive father would never admit his bigotry, but he called Mexicans “Spanish people,” as if that made our neighbors less repugnant. My classmates acted as if I was part of the group. When I was gone, they read the name of the place—Crippled Children’s Hospital—and then thought of me in the same way.

But in that hospital, the eleven other girls on my ward all had much more severe limitations. None could walk unassisted except for me. Some were in plaster casts from their toes to their chins. The girls with cerebral palsy couldn’t even brush their own teeth. My bleeding heart went into overdrive. I had to make everyone as happy as possible.

The nurses called me Snoopy because the dog in “Peanuts” cartoons did a happy dance. I fetched bed pans, held barf pans under chins and did stuff these girls couldn’t do for themselves. I told jokes and did magic tricks. All day long, I wanted to make everyone smile.

At night I cried out to God with my little white bible under my pillow. I was terrified I’d never get home, and for the three long months there, God felt very far away. I’m not sure if it was the institutional life or the antiseptic smells, but I kept helping others more and more in hopes that Jesus might somehow visit me there.

By the time I made it back to Yuma, I was changed. I’d never again let a person in need pass by without offering help.

Fast forward to my junior year in high school. My friend’s dad died, and her mom had a mental health crisis. Heart bleeding on my sleeve, I begged to have her stay with my family until she graduated high school. She did and we’re BFFs forever.

Only then did that familiar and slightly weird sensation float back—a strong yet gentle aroma of fresh cut wood, the unmistakable sense that love itself was shadowing my life. A feeling that the sleeve my heart hangs upon is so thin that I could reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ garment.

I’m no saint and I often miss the cues to help—especially when it’s risky or expensive. But empathy, compassion, doing God’s work—whatever you want to call it seems rarer than ever these days. If we want to be followers of Jesus, we could begin by attuning our hearts to the cries of the needy and sampling the air for whiffs of that woodsy aroma.

In these fractious times, I rest a bit easier knowing that Jesus walks beside us. And when times get rough, He’ll gladly carry us through whatever life brings. Bleeding hearts are really sacred hearts. Wear yours on your sleeve so that we can recognize one another along the Way.