Collectors for Life
Life is a collection.
It’s a beautiful collection.
And it’s a meaningful collection.
In the first third of life though, there can be a misperception of what we collect in life. A practice of imbalance in what we collect in life. The first third of life many times (but not always) is set up in a way that we begin to believe that life is a collection of gains. A marble collection that keeps on growing. We gain grades. We gain friends. We gain opportunities. We gain internships. We gain strengths.
All of this is true, but it’s only half the story of what we actually collect in life.
We not only collect gains, but we also collect losses. Talk to anyone who has moved way beyond their twenties, and you will hear the stories begin to compile of losses as well. We lose opportunities. We lose youth. We lose health. We lose people. We lose experiences.
Life is a beautiful collection of gains and losses.
Now why bring up such a depressing thought? Why put words to what we all feel when watching the intro scene of the Pixar Movie, Up?
From my point of view, the people who thrive the most in life are those who prepare and welcome this reality. Those who ignore the reality that life is also a collection of losses, tend to not know what to do when losses come their way. The reactions tend to be negative either because it feels like something went wrong or life has cheated them.
The hard truth no one loves talking about is that every moment we collect in life can’t always be about gain. Some moments in life are losses. But here is the good news, even though there isn’t something to gain in every moment of life, there is something to be found in every moment of life.
Listening Takes Silence
When a loss comes your way, I’d like to invite you to embrace a story I embraced a year ago.
The story comes from the Hebrew stories. It’s one that the teachers of these stories believe is the way to find something in the midst of loss.
The story is found in the stories of Moses, but this story isn’t actually about Moses. It’s about his brother, Aaron. Moses has been tasked with leading a small people group towards freedom, a different life, a life drenched in the ways of God and Aaron is his Vice President through it all.
Throughout their different journeys, there is a theme of how God speaks. God is always chatting up with Moses. He gives Moses visions. He gives Moses orders. He gives Moses the game plan. And Moses relays it to everyone else, including Aarron.
But in one part of their story in this journey, the script flips only for a brief second. It’s buried deep within so many words that it’s easy to miss. The moment happens right after the passing of Aaron’s two sons, who put themselves in harm’s way by not following the practices of their community.1 Aaron ends up losing his sons. It’s a massive loss in his life. And this is when it happens.
This time, and only this time, the text says, “And the Lord spoke to Aaron.”
This is the only time God speaks to Aaron.2
This is different. This is jarring for anyone reading the story of all their journeys. And this is a divine tissue to all of our runny noses in the midst of loss. There is not something to be found in loss, but Someone to be heard in loss.
Many of the teachers of this passage point to the significance of this small detail. The words he hears are words people have heard before. The words have already been in existence. But many teachers suggest that in the midst of his pain and in the absence of who he loves, he is able to hear the Voice of Love that he could not hear before.
He hears the voice of God.
One of the short term effects of loss is silence. If you’ve ever attended a funeral, you know this to be painfully true. Death brings about silence over not only the body that has experienced death but it also silences everyone who knew them as well.
Every form of loss, even the most minor of losses, brings silence to our hearts. We miss the laughter of a possible significant other. Our phone is silent after moving to a new place where you’re no longer around your friends. The new workplace you join isn’t filled with the same conversations or collaboration as the last.
This is where the God of Aaron, Moses, and Jesus has something to offer us.
Many religions believe silence is empty. It’s a way to clear your mind. The Christian faith though believes that silence is full. It’s a way to sense who is all around us all the time.
Full of what you might ask, well Aaron can tell us firsthand, the voice of God.
Embrace the Intrusions
Here is what I want you to be mindful of as you collect different moments of loss in your life. Loss is like detaching the door of your heart.
When I talk about the detaching of the door to your heart, I think of how some parents take the door of their children’s door frame as a form of discipline after participating in hooligan behavior. When you lose the door to your room, you’re alway extremely vulnerable. Everyone can see in all the time and anything and anyone is free to walk in and out as we please.
This image, in a way, it’s what it’s like to go through loss. To feel the absence of something or someone is to rip the door of your heart open. Everyone can see in and any painful or sad memory can come in as it pleases.
Another way to say it is that loss is an intruder. Loss is like a pesky little sister who enters your room without you knowing or without an invitation When loss comes near, we know it will intrude on our normal daily life without warning. By the time you see it, it’s too late.
Someone’s perfume takes you back to a different season of life.
A song plays in the background that reminds you of them.
A person walking in front of you catches your attention because from behind they look like her or him.
A phrase someone uses takes you back to what used to be true.
Loss, especially when it’s fresh, is an intruder who walks in and out of the heart as it pleases. Our instinct will always be to push it out or push down simply because it doesn’t feel like a gain in our life. The invitation in those moments of silence and intrusion though is to find something.
Or better said, to find Someone.
Instead of trying to get past this intrusion, I invite you to embrace it. Listen to it. Let it into the room of your mind and let it sit on the couch for a while. Ask it why it stirs so much emotion in you? Ask it what it has to teach you about life? Invite it to reveal what you really care about behind the thing or person you’ve lost. Sit in the silence instead of trying to fill it.
Why? Why would you do such a hard and painful thing? Why would I not just focus on collecting the next gain in my life opposed to dwelling in the loss?
Well, simply because of this:
In the moments where we ourselves are at a loss for words, we might just hear the voice of God in a moment we could have never heard before in our lives.
And if you ask me, those are the moments I want to collect in my lifetime.
How about you?
References
1Leviticus 10:1-11
2David Wolpe, Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), 16.