Lost in our Loss

I realize it's been a while since I've written a post.  In all honesty, I found it difficult to write or say anything in the last month or two.  I'm not entirely sure if it was just a case of writer's block, or the sense that nothing seemed to inspire me.  There was a time in my life when writing was the only way for me to process through all the tangles of my thoughts.  It was the only way I could lay my grievances, prayers, joys, and musings before God.  It gave me clarity in the fog of my mind and an outlet to speak when at times I was too shy, too afraid, and too insecure to use my actual voice.  But there comes a point when words no longer suffice, and there is nothing you can write that could ever convey the depth of emotions you may feel.  There will be a time when even the eloquence of words will let you down.  And there will be a time when you are just utterly empty and entirely lost.  Strangely enough, staying quiet was the only thing that gave me peace from the storms that raged around me.   I had to face God without words, and perhaps He wanted it that way.  Sometimes words clutter our ability to hear His still small voice.  Sometimes, its not just words, but things and idols we have built in place of our worship.    

In the last couple of months, it wasn't only words I had lost.  I seemed to have lost many many things, including my way in life.  It was definitely a season of idol-stripping.  Everything I had put my hope in and worth in, God slowly removed. I could say it all began when, quite literally, my most expensive possessions were swept away by water.  I had never owned much in life, and my electronics were the most valuable things I had.  When I saw my bag sink to the bottom of the river with every electronic device I owned, my first reaction was to do whatever it took to save them.  Sad.  My second reaction was to be upset at the possibility that I could have lost all my work, all my drawings, designs, papers, and stories I had worked on over the years.  It was the only legacy I felt I had to leave behind, the only thing of value my life had produced over the years.  It was my work.  Though I was lucky enough to have been spared the latter, it forced me to think about where I was placing my identity.  It scared me to know that who I was could've been so easily lost. 

As I journeyed back home from England, I knew things wouldn't be easy.   There was no permanent place for me to stay, and with the lack of a job and money, my only option was to sofa surf.  Three months later I am still surfing, still living out of my suitcase.  I haven't been able to unpack or settle into a routine as of yet, though  I was lucky enough to return to the same company I used to work for as a temporary means of survival and source of income.  This very much reminded me of the path Peter's journey took after the excitement and disappointment of following Jesus to the cross.  He returned to the only familiar thing he knew to do; fish.  Right now, I am fishing.  There is still a very vague sense of what the next step in life is, and it's difficult to not completely lose myself in all the loss I feel like I've encountered.  It's never easy when God takes your hand and leads you into the desert to be stripped.  My only solace is to believe there must be a greater purpose.  My greatest fear is that there may not be.

Yesterday at church, we had a Trappist Monk as a guest speaker, and coincidentally the topic was on Psalm 22 and how to deal with suffering.  It seems timely in the wake of everything that has happened in the last week with the storm.  My heart and prayers go out to the families who have lost much and endured such great suffering.  I can't fully explain why life takes us down these roads, or why in our seasons of loss we feel the most lost, or why God will lead us multiple times back into the desert to be stripped.  What I can say is that each time, it gets easier, and our spirits grow quieter.  There is less grumbling and less complaining, and we remember to hold all things with loose hands.  Our tempest-tost souls learn to be anchored in the Lord.  We begin to see how worthless our idols are, and how easily our material possessions can be washed away.  If we put our hope in those things and our value in what we have, then surely we will be swept away along with them.  We are not defined by where we live or where we work.  We are not defined by what we have.    We are, and always will be, children of God.  I have in me the ability to praise and worship the creator of the universe, and even in my loss of words, I can speak of the good news of salvation.  It seemed timely to write something now, in the aftermath of so much loss for so many people.  I understand what its like to not have a home, to lose things you've invested so much time and money into.  It's painful, and it's hard to want to turn to God.  But I can testify with assurance that those who trust in Lord will not be disappointed.  Wait for Him as watchmen wait for the morning, and He will come.  The stripping is never just for the sake of taking away possessions, or even discipline.  He takes in order to give us something much better.  He blinds us in certain seasons so we learn to not simply trust in what our eyes see.  In the lack of my own words to express the deepness of these lessons, I remember those of William Blake's in his poem the Auguries of Innocence:

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro’ the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

 Our worldly possessions are meant to be lost, broken, and swept away.  Even this world is said to be quickly perishing.  It is in the darkness of our nights that we begin to see God's light.  He knows all too well what it means to suffer, what it means to lose.  But He is a God of resurrection and not death, and will rebuild what has been struck down.  The Trappist Monk left the congregation with these words: "Do not waste your suffering".  There are definitely times when I am afraid that the Lord will not show up, and that all the sufferings I've tasted will be for nothing.  It's hard to re-shape my perceptions to resemble heavenly thinking.  I am still disciplining myself to let hope rise in the place of fear.  What I have learned is that God takes our words seriously, and when we say that we will follow Him, he will sometimes lead us to dry and treacherous places.  He will strip us of our idols, of all our possessions.  But we will understand, that even in our nakedness, we have the greatest thing of all.  We have the good news of salvation, and faith to believe that He is good, all the time.