Recovering from Irrecoverable Losses

WRITTEN OFF to ruin and sanctified to glory beyond our touch – many losses we experience come without any warning and the loss is, well, a loss. Such a thing – a thing we loved and loved dearly – has come and gone, now, in a flash.

How are we to cope with the stinging burden of grief? Until it occurs in bellowing volumes of pain, we never understand it: grief. And when it occurs, we cannot comprehend how and why life has to be so hard.

Attempting to Get Something Tangible From Grief

Losses tend with us over life’s full journey,

For to have lost was to have loved never more,

Whilst losses have the requiem of a living touch from God,

Losses have pain with which we cannot ignore!

God reminds us of who is really in control when we understand those things that happened we cannot turn around. They are done. This is not to make such horrible truths sting even more than they need to – as if anything can truly sting more than an irrecoverable loss. But it is about acknowledging the truth: this life, this loss, and love of all kinds; these are all about God.

Now we can commence an important knowledge.

Having reconciled that what we deal with is irreconcilable, and knowing God is a good God in that (and this is something we must know or our hopes of recovery are gone!), we are fast-tracked into an acceptance of peace we cannot understand. God does grant such a passage into such a peace.

Losses involve a journey into torment,

Harrowing is the burden of grief,

But what holds us, holds us and keeps us,

What keeps us is the hope of relief.

The hope of relief does hold us and keep us. Such a hope is invisible, yet it’s ever worthy, for it’s our only hope. Then this hope transforms into something real. Suddenly we are being made bigger somehow. We are being connected to something inherent in God. We become woven into and sown into life.

We are more at one with God.

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Recovering from an irrecoverable loss is about acknowledging the truth: this life, this loss, this love; these are all about God. God is the central premise. When we start with God in all our pain, knowing that only God can help, we demand fewer answers and begin the journey toward acceptance.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.