Loss & Love

Before tonight, I never realized how deeply a heart can ache for someone else’s loss. When I logged on for my nightly dinnertime email check, I received an email that a dear, dear friend of mine from home’s dad had unexpectedly passed away. The pain I felt for her loss was unreal and unexpected and cut me deep, which at some level probably reflected my unspoken, deeply woven fears for losing someone I love while I’m away. I collapsed in inconsolable tears, hyperventilation, and literal pain in my chest.

This comes after a string of great losses, heartaches, and challenges from many of my brothers and sisters back in America. Each one cuts deeper and makes me realize just how far away I am. That I can’t comfort someone with a hug when they need it. That my only option for responding to their pain is through email, which continues to be too impersonal for me. That I’m missing out on sharing directly in people’s lives while I’m 8,000 miles away.

At times, it seems impossible to understand the sovereignty of God in our lives. I want to kick and scream at Him for how unfair it is to put such pain in others’ lives. But this I know to be true: that He is faithful and full of grace in the midst of devastating grief; that He surrounds us with community to love on us in our time of need; that He creates sweet blessings out of the greatest trials in our lives.

I’m at a loss for how to respond to God’s mysterious and heartbreaking plan for us. Tonight, all I can do is “pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know that this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:16-19)