When faced with a tragic loss, I stand before twin choices. I can either resist the pain that comes with loss, or yield to it. There's no middle ground.
While I've never lost a job or my sanity, I have lost my mother, my marriage, and most recently a friend who was closer to me than a brother. All three are tragic, life-defining losses. Crippling. But not debilitating. In fact, the opposite.
With each loss there finally comes a strength within that rises in the vacuum. With each loss, I may have lost what I thought I could not live without, but I've never lost myself, never lost God. Instead, the crippling is a severe mercy; the limping, a freedom. Loss brings me nearer to that essential nothingness that is my truest self before God.
Loss is essentially cruciform.
Am I poorer now, or richer? Am I less, or am I more? Am I wounded, or am I free to simply be?
My heart still beats, my lungs still breathe. And even if they ceased, the "I" that is beloved of God still lives.
And so . . .
I sit in silence on the edge
that is the vast abyss
of my nothingness
before God.
I linger there
quite self-aware
when suddenly He gives a nudge.
I’m
f
a
l
l
i
n
g
now . . .
groping,
grasping,
for anything.
There’s nothing
but a glassy wall
and howling silence as I fall.
I’m
f
a
l
l
i
n
g
but . . .
I’m losing what
in falsity
I thought myself to need and be
until there’s nothing left of me
to sit and care
if this is some odd tomb
or blessed womb
of God
