Wisdom for Losers

I confess this morning I'm a loser.  I don't mean I'm a loser in today's terms (unless you ask Sarah, who is playfully and lovingly giving me a hard time for my latest attempt at fashion trending).  The type of loser I'm referring to is the type who acknowledges that loss is certainly a part of living.

This Monday morning, I woke up to enjoy the final fleeting moments with my parents before they left on their way.  As they left and Sarah left shortly after, I felt a certain, undeniable heaviness flooding over me.  I've already confessed Mondays can be a little intimidating for me, so no surprise really.  But feeling the moment of being with my favorite people and being within the moments when we can take the time to enjoy each other slowly slip away added to that weight today.

In my reflection on this heaviness, I took inventory of the entire last week and weekend, and began to see how God is speaking today to us today:

It's been a difficult week as many of the Horizons community mourn the loss of a young man overcome by his own weight of living.  It's been an exciting week as I prepared for and performed a wedding for a young, wonderful couple at Horizons.  It was a joyous weekend as Sarah's family poured into our home Saturday to prepare for Sarah's sister's graduation from Doane College on Sunday.  It was a fun weekend not only to have 6 people staying with us in our still-new house, but also to have my parents come a join in the celebrations.  It was sad to see everyone leave as the celebrations ended.

What I believe God is saying in the midst of this weight is what He breathed into the wisdom writer who penned the haunting, clarifying book of Ecclesiastes:  there is a time for everything--for living, dying, planting, harvesting, building, breaking, weeping, laughing, searching, rejecting, loving, hating, losing, gaining, winning, falling, aching, and thriving (my own paraphrasing).   

The wisdom in this for a loser today is not that we have to take the bad with the good and just accept that we have to deal with both, but instead that we must desire, cultivate, and welcome both the good AND the bad in our lives if we wish to be whole, truly filled, and entirely connected to our God. The words in Ecclesiastes can be tough to read when we're simply seeking for an "all good, all the time" kind of life.  But if we're looking for the real life that Jesus Christ died to offer us, we have to go beyond that.

And so today I'm holding myself accountable to going through these steps:

1. Acknowledging both my pain and losses, my joys and my gratitude
2. Acknowledging the weight of my heart, the sadness, and the fear, and let it be okay.
3. Looking at my greater life and consider how embracing this weight will shape my person hood and my faith.
4. Being proud and thankful to feel the weight and sadness of things in my life because it means the following:
• I care enough to hurt
• I am open enough to lose
• I am dependent on others enough to feel weak in their absence
• I am frail enough to let God into ALL of who I am in this world for His glory

Today may be heavy, but the weight of God's levity will always have a bigger impact than any other presence when we allow it.

More to come!

Jason <><