On Loss

From the archives – written 2012

We’ve been dealing with our loss in a different way these days. My son is older, processing divorce, loss, and regrets of what he’s never known in a way he’s never had to before.  The divorce happened when he was only 15 months old, and there are so many questions unanswered for him.

While eating dinner quietly together one evening this week, his eyes suddenly filled with tears in the middle of our conversation.  Fears, cares, and uncertainty spilled from his mind into words at our little kitchen table.

He’s only 7. Only 7 and a half. I thought to myself, listening to him trying to explain emotions bigger and deeper than he could comprehend.  Haltingly and carefully, his thoughts stumbled out. Sometimes he couldn’t find the right words for what he wanted to say.  Sometimes, his profound insight struck me through the heart. That night began a conversation that will likely be ongoing for years to come.

In all my search for wholeness and healing in the wake of divorce, I realized that I was trying to somehow make it okay.  I felt someday we would both reach a place where what had happened that led to a divorce was “okay.” I began to accept that there are elements of the effects of divorce that would never be okay. It was a loss.

This week I heard loss described not as a wound, but as an amputation. I had approached our loss as a wound that would heal–I believed the wound would heal completely, even though a scar might remain.  But again, loss is better described as an amputation: a part of you is always gone–something is always missing.

As I was navigating my son’s emotions and my own healing, I realized that I had to accept that we would always feel the loss.  I had to look briefly at the days stretching in front of us–school events, graduations, his eventual marriage, my future grandchildren–and acknowledge that all of those things would be affected by this life event.  

Feeling the loss may be inevitable, but I am determined that we continue to walk through this life graciously–learning from the loss, and not allowing bitterness to take hold in our hearts. We are not going to let the loss define us negatively.  We can be happy, joyful, expectant, and hopeful.

Seven years into this journey, I love where we are because we have hindsight.  I don’t wonder if God’s going to come through for us anymore. I can stand where we are, pointing my son back down to the valleys we’ve walked through and the dragons we’ve slayed.  With certainty, I can tell my him: Look at what God did.  Notice how He used that situation to prepare us for this one. Observe how He provided answers, cleared the path, and rescued us. Don’t forget how He has provided for and blessed us.

I have more hope now than I ever had.  Truly. An opening line in my journal this week stated:  These are happy days.

They really are.  Some of the best days of my life have been lived in the past 7 years.  The loss, the amputation, spurred me on to live life in a way I never would have before the loss.  The John Newton quote comes to mind: “I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.” 

I wouldn’t have chosen this path, but I surely wouldn’t change it now.  I hear my son’s pain, and am so grateful.  Don’t misunderstand me.  If I could take it away I would. If I could change what he’s feeling, I would.  But I am grateful because my son is talking, pushing through, seeking understanding, watching how I respond, searching for truth…and he’s going to be better for it.  I don’t understand this about God, but I know this about Him–He uses hard things, tough days, hurtful situations to shape us, refine us, and make us into the people that He imagined us to be when He created us.

He trusted my boy with hurt and loss sooner than He trusted me, which leads me to believe His plan for my son’s life is beautiful.  And good.

Author’s Note: I share this as a story of hope for those going through the pain of divorce or any kind of loss. My son is a thriving 19 year old young man as of this posting, and although there is more to our story, much of it is his to share now. I see even more clearly how God guided me as a parent as I look back on that time in our lives. The loss is not the end.