I caught a bit of an interview on NPR today. Terri Gross was interviewing a former Episcopal minister (also a woman) and the ex-minister was talking about how she noticed “compassion fatigue” when she got out of the ministering business. It was a huge load off of her, and she didn’t even realize that she had it!<\/p>\n
I identified with that. Not so much with compassion, but with some other things while I was in Yemen. It occurs to me that while I was there, I was always trying to be the model American and the model Christian. For many of the locals, I was the only one of either that they had ever met, and I might be the only one they ever meet. I was always conscious of having to set an example. I felt that if I did something to upset them or offend them they would most likely generalize that experience to include all Americans and Christians. <\/p>\n
After a while, it became routine for me, but it was always there. When I got back, I knew I had to recuperate, but I couldn’t really put my finger on what I was recuperating from. I think a big part of it was getting used to not sticking out anymore. I’m just another guy here, I’m not the<\/em> Christian, the<\/em> American, I’m just another person… The anonymity is really nice, all the pressure is gone. I don’t think I realized what kind of strain that put on me until I got used to the idea that I wouldn’t have to be an example any more. It was a huge weight off of me, and I feel much better because of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I caught a bit of an interview on NPR today. Terri Gross was interviewing a former Episcopal minister (also a woman) and the ex-minister was talking about how she noticed “compassion fatigue” when she got out of the ministering business. It was a huge load off of her, and she didn’t even realize that she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}