I don’t always have the words to explain it.

But I feel everything. Deeply. Quietly. All the time.

I’ve walked into rooms and felt the air shift before anyone spoke. I’ve hugged someone and sensed the tremble in their body before a single tear fell. I’ve looked into tired eyes and caught glimpses of battles they hadn’t yet named. Sometimes I don’t know where my emotions end and theirs begin.

Some people call it discernment. Others call it being an empath. For me, it feels more like a quiet calling. Not shouted from the mountaintop but whispered into the soul, like a breeze that brushes your cheek and disappears before you can explain it.

I believe God gave some of us this kind of heart. A heart that leans in without being invited. A heart that hears what isn’t said. A heart that notices the quiver in a voice, the forced smile, or the sigh that sinks into the room. A heart that reaches for the broken pieces before they hit the ground. It’s a beautiful gift, but it can be exhausting.

When you feel everything, you carry more than your share. The worry in your child’s eyes. The tension radiating off your husband’s shoulders. The sadness behind someone’s practiced smile. And sometimes, you carry it before they even realize they’re dropping it. I’ve felt the weight of brokenness in others so deeply that it’s broken me.

There’s a kind of grief that moves through the world quietly. It doesn’t cry out or ask to be seen. It hides behind polite greetings and half-hearted laughter. But you can feel it in the way someone moves, cautiously, like they’re tiptoeing through glass. It clings like a soaked coat, heavy and cold against the skin. They smile. They say they’re fine. But if you’re paying attention, you know they’re unraveling, thread by thread.

If your heart is tuned to this kind of ache, you hear it in the silence. You see it in the way their eyes flicker when the room grows quiet. You feel it in your own chest, like a deep ache that doesn’t belong to you but settles there anyway. You don’t have to fix it, but you can sit with them. You can hold space. You can offer stillness when the world is loud. You can remind them they don’t have to carry it alone.

Sometimes, empathy becomes action. I’ve cried during the national anthem in crowded stadiums, not just because of the song itself, but because of the weight it holds. The hushed reverence. The hand over heart. The swell of music that seems to lift the air around you. I’ve hugged strangers who needed something I could give. I’ve offered kind words to someone I sensed was running low on hope. It costs nothing to be gentle, but for someone else, it might mean everything.

There have been seasons when I asked God to help me feel less. But He didn’t. Instead, He’s been teaching me how to carry the weight without letting it crush me. How to sit with the ache but still come up for air. How to love deeply without losing myself in the process.

Jesus wept with those who mourned, even when He knew resurrection was coming. He didn’t rush them through their grief or silence their sorrow with a miracle. He stopped and stood in it with them. He listened. He felt it. He let His own tears fall. The Son of God, fully divine and fully human, was moved by the pain of others. He didn’t just come to save. He came to feel. To walk dusty roads beside the weary. To place healing hands on trembling bodies. To look into tear-stained faces and call them beloved.

He had compassion on the crowds who followed Him, not because they had anything to offer, but because they were lost and hungry. He fed them. He healed them. He saw them. The bleeding woman in the crowd. The leper crying out from a distance. The blind man begging by the roadside. Every one of them was seen. Known. Touched. Restored.

That is the example I keep coming back to. Not one of detachment, but of holy presence. That is the balance I am learning. How to feel deeply without drowning. How to care completely without fading away. How to carry tenderness not just as a burden, but as a reflection of the One who carried it first.

So if you walk through life with an open heart, if you carry what others cannot say, if you notice what others overlook, know this: You are not too much. You were made for this.

There’s a reason your heart picks up what others miss. A reason your presence speaks even when you say nothing. Don’t shrink from that. Don’t harden to survive it. Your softness is not a flaw. It is a strength.

So when the weight of the room finds you, pause. Breathe. Let the silence settle. Let the Spirit meet you there. And remember. God trusted you with that tenderness. Let Him show you how to carry it without letting it undo you.