Like most people, I have heard of, seen and experienced disaster, destruction and severe loss in my life. People we know, friends, communities and ourselves have all experienced various degrees of loss. The loss of family, friends, homes, careers, jobs or status.
Most devestations and losses are tangible. With the loss of external and tangible people, or things, it’s important to recognize another loss that we may easily overlook. With any external or tangible loss we also experience the internal, intangible, and unseen loss of our core needs. Hope and Love.
Love is experienced at different levels. But love can be simplified as something that is good. People, or things, in our life make us feel and experience goodness. People and things in our life cause us to feel and experience value, safety, worth and purpose.
Losing something we love can be an experience of losing something that seemed to give us a sense of value, worth, purpose, and a sense of, “this is good”. When we experience the loss of someone or something that we valued, cherished or loved it can cause us to feel and believe that we have lost love.
When we experience loss it is also often accompanied by fear. Fear that what was lost can never, and will never, be replaced. The fear can make us believe that since that “good thing” in our life is gone that the value, worth and purpose we used to attain from it is also gone.
This fear then darkens, and seemingly eliminates, our hope. Hope for the future. Hope of experiencing, or attaining that sense of love, or good, in the future. It can become extremely challenging to grasp, see, or believe in any hope at all.
In the study of “The cycle of grief and loss”, it’s well known that there are multiple stages that we go through in coping with the loss of things. The part of this “cycle” that anyone going through it wants to get to is, “The end of it”. The end of the cycle of grief, the end of dealing with our loss is what we often ask, pray and beg for.
What I have discovered as an important and helpful way to recover and heal from loss is by not putting our focus on trying to recover, or replace, the external loss first. It’s difficult to answer, or process, the loss of a person, people, careers or tangible things. Yet, if we focus on replacing the external loss we may not answer or resolve the deeper internal issues. The perceived loss of love and the loss of hope.
When the internal loss of love and hope remain unresolved we may realize that no external person or thing can fully replace, fill, or heal our original external loss. Our minds rationalize that we need to either get back what we lost, or replace it. Yet we may notice that, even if we get back or replace the person or thing that we lost there is still an internal void that remains. A lingering internal loss that is felt from having gone through the experience.
Seeing that replacing the loss of the external things in our life does not always resolve the internal loss, it appears that finding and restoring hope and love should be the first and primary focus. If we choose to see and believe that there is hope and love for us then we can begin to truly recover from the grief of our losses.
Choose to believe that there is hope for your future. Choose to believe, and remind yourself, that there is good and love in your future. Although the external loss may not ever be regained, the love and hope that came from those external things still exists.
We must first begin to answer the loss of the unseen and intangible. If we can believe that our unseen needs of love and hope can and will be regained then, in time, we will also see the healing and recovery of the external loss. In whatever new shape or form the external may look.
Make an effort to discover and recognize what your intangible and unseen losses were. Did the thing that you lost give you a sense of purpose? Know that there is purpose for you still. You can and will find it. Did the thing that you lost give you a sense of safety and comfort? You will find safety and comfort again.
Faith is believing even when we can’t see. Have faith. Ask your Father to help you have Faith. Ask Him to help you believe, and to know, that you will regain the love, the good, the hope and purpose that seems to be lost.
It is promised, “Ask and it shall be given.” “Seek and you will find it.” Let God help you discover the unseen, internal and vital things that have seemingly been lost. There is hope. There is Love. There is a future, a good future for you.
Your unseen creator, your Father has said, “I do have plans for you. Plans that I know about, even if you can’t see them right now. They are plans filled with hope. Plans for a good future.”
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