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Loss is loss, whatever the circumstances. All losses are bad, only bad in different ways. No two losses are ever the same. Each loss stands on its own and inflicts a unique kind of pain. What makes each loss so catastrophic is its devastating, cumulative, and irreversible nature.
Die before you die. There is no chance after. C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
Bedtime with Catherine, David, and John allowed me to convey the blessing and love of God to them. I was not yet fully alive to these ordinary moments, but I began to glimpse how profound they were.
willingness to face the loss and enter into the darkness is the first step we must take. Like all first steps, it is probably the most difficult and takes the most time.
We do not always have the freedom to choose the roles we must play in life, but we can choose how we are going to play the roles we have been given.
We can return evil for evil, or we can overcome evil with good.
Loss can also make us more. In the darkness we can still find the light. In death we can also find life. It depends on the choices we make.
I did not want to respond to the tragedy in a way that would exacerbate the evil I had already experienced.
I knew that running from the darkness would only lead to greater darkness later on.
In choosing to face the night, I took my first steps toward the sunrise.
Pain will have its day because loss is undeniably, devastatingly real.
Recovery is a misleading and empty expectation.
We recover from broken limbs, not amputations.
Transcendence makes our tragedies look smaller and opens us to the possibility that life is more than tragedy and that there is also grace, which is given in the miracle of the present moment.
Gifts of grace come to all of us. But we must be ready to see and willing to receive these gifts. It will require a kind of sacrifice, the sacrifice of believing that, however painful our losses, life can still be good—good in a different way than before, but nevertheless good.
Catastrophic loss is like undergoing an amputation of our identity.
My new circumstances were a given; my response was not.
Loss forces us to see the dominant role our environment plays in determining our happiness. Loss strips us of the props we rely on for our well-being. It knocks us off our feet and puts us on our backs. In the experience of loss, we come to the end of ourselves.
But in coming to the end of ourselves, we can also come to the beginning of a vital relationship with God.
When loss deprives us of those circumstances, our anger, depression, and ingratitude expose the true state of our souls, showing us how small we really are. We see that our identity is largely external, not internal.
The first kind of death happens to us; the second kind of death happens in us. It is a death we bring on ourselves if we refuse to be transformed by the first death.
The problem of expecting to live in a perfectly fair world is that there is no grace in that world, for grace is grace only when it is undeserved.
I will have to endure the bad I do not deserve; I will also get the good I do not deserve. I dread experiencing undeserved pain, but it is worth it to me if I can also experience undeserved grace.
To live in a world with grace is better by far than to live in a world of absolute fairness.
If we insist life be fair, we will be disappointed.
Though forgiveness appears to contradict what seems fair and right, forgiving people decide that they would rather live in a merciful universe than in a fair one, for their sake as much as for anyone else’s.
Forgiveness is more a process than an event, more a movement within the soul than an action on the surface, such as saying the words, “I forgive you.”
Our memory of the past is not neutral. It can poison us or heal us, depending on the way we remember the events.
There is too much mystery to make God’s ways easy to explain. Still, I keep circling this mystery, exploring it from a variety of perspectives.
Freedom is what makes love possible in the first place.
Loss may call the existence of God into question. Pain seems to conceal him from us, making it hard for us to believe there could be a God in the midst of our suffering. In our pain we are tempted to reject God, yet for some reason we hesitate to take that course of action. So we ponder and pray. We move toward God, then away from him. We wrestle in our souls to believe. Finally we choose God, and in the choosing we learn that he has already chosen us and has already been drawing us to him. We approach him in our freedom, having minds that can doubt as well as believe, hearts that can feel
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I knew in that moment that God was there at the accident. God was there to welcome our loved ones into heaven. God was there to comfort us. God was there to send those of us who survived in a new direction.
Each person’s experience is their own, even if, on the face of it, the experience appears similar to many others.
Though suffering itself is universal, each experience of suffering is unique because each person who goes through it is unique.
We must enter the darkness of loss alone, but once there we will find others with whom we can share life together.
They must be willing to be changed by someone else’s loss, though they might not have been directly affected by it.
Good comfort requires empathy, forces adjustments, and sometimes mandates huge sacrifices. Comforters must be prepared to let the pain of another become their own, and so let it transform them.
It reminded me of the opportunity and privilege I had to be a father to three traumatized and bewildered children. I did not want one loss—the death of a mother—to lead to another, equally unbearable loss—the death of a father who was still alive. Enough destruction had occurred as it was. I was not willing to add to it by withdrawing from them and depriving them of the love they needed. I wanted to overcome evil by doing good.
My story is part of a much larger story that I did not choose. I was assigned a role for which I did not audition. Yet I have the power to choose how I will live out that story and play that role. I want to live my story well and play my role with as much integrity and joy as I can.
