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Loss Is More: Hope in the Midst of Pain

Before losing my dad to an unexpected stroke, I didn’t imagine loss as part of my ideal life plan. Umm. No. I’d like to avoid suffering at all costs, please. Guess what my dad’s death did to my precious, controlling life plan? It messed all that up. But God, He used loss as the catalyst for hope beyond this life, to cut through the crowd’s buzz, to focus on details, to usher me toward noticing faces through the masses, to worry less about the extra, and to crave genuine beauty waiting to be praised today.

Loss is more.

Loss provides a narrowed, stripped-down-beauty-from-ashes, life-from-death perspective. Loss takes the future I intended, turns it upside down, shakes my goals and replaces them with God’s plan. Loss pulls away cobwebs from my eyes, clears a dull humming in my ears, and forces me to evaluate what really matters.

Loss transforms. It puts aside the fluff, and bends low to an essential Jesus. Loss replaces the whir of busy and places a funnel to listen to a God I’ve always wanted to hear. A Savior I’ve wanted to know. A relationship I heard others talk of and knew was possible, but, until suffering was upon me, didn’t depend on for my next breath.

Loss is more.

Loss pulls out the shadowed colors and brings them to vivid light. Loss focuses a flashlight on the present, and for that moment, the present is all to be celebrated and grabbed on to, for beyond the brilliant light is He who holds eternity. For this reason, suffering is stomached. Not because it’s easy to swallow, but for the sheer joy of knowing life waits on the other side.