Loss teaches humble survival in the adversities of life

Loss is an eye opener.  It opens one’s eyes to the depths of life possible in this life.

Until we’ve suffered through loss that cannot be shaken or resolved, we don’t realise what little power and control we possess in this life.  It’s true that this doesn’t occur to us until we’ve suffered, though there are rare individuals who do somehow empathetically understand without having yet suffered the salient depths of grief.

But suffering is and always will be the rudest awakening, even if it may not be quite as raw as our initial foray into trial.

The depths I sank to in my darkest sortie into grief 18 years ago were a ground zero—the end of one life and the beginning of another “reality” that was completely foreign—and yet I was astonished with how hard 2016 was.  Put this into context with the utterly incomprehensible 2014 losing Nathanael and being simultaneously stressed by the leader of our church.  Though I knew in 2016 what it was like to live as if all my desires were dead, that year showed me what it was like to live as if I were existentially alone, such was it that I was absolutely cast out of all that I loved doing and being.  I’d been considered “disloyal” when I’d done my level best to be faithful, and I felt many considered me an abject failure.  There were so many fragments of rock bottom in that year, 2016.

Only in the past year or two has the Christian world been rocked by what I knew back then was a toxic dynamic—that of blind loyalty.  Thankfully, such blind loyalty to one’s leadership has been shown to be the toxic dynamic it is.  This dynamic caused me no end of grief, and you know this is the case when you try to please people and it still isn’t working.

Such a year like 2016 forces you to sow hard into the rebuilding, like building again from the foundations up.  Sowing as it’s occurred has been the easy bit, because I’ve got no problem saying yes to God.

What I’ve struggled with is soul tiredness of a deferred hope that makes the heart sick.  Sowing, sowing, sowing some more, yet little reaping in the way you expect to reap.  Yet God has opened unexpected doorways.

I’ve found personally that though there are times I’d give up, even in this present season, I’ve also found my God and my faith won’t allow me to.  I keep getting cause for hope, and that’s at least an admission of how blessed we really are.

And that’s it.  Somehow, no matter what’s ripped away from you, there’s still so many reasons to be thankful.  And still, what cannot be ignored is that riveting experience of a mind bludgeoned by thoughts of dread for the loss.  And again, that’s the blessing having truly carried our losses as cosmic burdens from that first day forward to the very present, that life has come to now have a depth about it that’s irrefutable.

Loss teaches us that life is fathoms deeper than we’d previously contemplate.  Loss shows us that the bandwidth of life is unintelligible.

Loss invites us into humility, to know that we’re truly small, and this simply serves to right size our expectations.

Loss teaches us to estimate ourselves more truly according to the reality of our being.

Loss summonses us to maturity, and though that’s the hardest living process of all, we wouldn’t be who we are today—empathetic, resilient, and compassionate—without having grieved.