Identifying Losses
Who are you, Lord?
Acts 9:5
After Paul was struck down by God, he went away for three years. It must have been a time of deep remorese for persecuting the Church, but it was also a time to grieve. He had lost everything he had worked for. His reputation in the Jewish community was gone, and so were all his friends and associates. Eventually, he would consider those losses to be nothing in comparison to what he gained in Christ Jesus.
Most loses are easy to recognize, but some aren’t. Changing jobs or moving to a new location can precipitate depression. Even though both changes could improve your social standing and financial base, there are loses in the transistion. You probably had meaningful attachments to family, church, friends and familiar places, which you no longer have. Many losses are multifaceted. For instance, the loss of a job could also include the loss of wages, social status, respect, friendships and colleagues.
In order to move beyond denial and continue the grieving process, you have to identify the losses. Start by separating real loses from those that are threatened or imagined. In a real loss you can face the truth, grieve the loss, and make the necessary changes that make it possible to go on living in a meaningful way. You cannot process an imagined loss in the same way, because there is no basis in reality. Imagined losses are based on suspicions or lies that you believe or presumptions that you make up. If you imagine that something negative will happen and live accordingly, it will have the same effect on you emotionally as though it actually happened. False prophecies and lies are the basis for many depressed people.
Threatened losses have the potential of being real losses, such as the possibility of a layoff at work or a spouse threatening to leave. Such threats can precipitate depressed states of the mind when believed. It is helpful to convert threatened loses to real loses in your mind and ask yourself a question: Can I live with that? This prepares you to accept the idea of impermanence. The answer to that question should be, Yes I can! Of course you can, because “God will meet all your needs” (Philippians 4:19), and you “can do all things through Christ” who gives you strength (4:13, NKJV). People all over the world are facing similar crisis that are real and have survived. These are growth issues, not terminal issues, if you understand life from an eternal perspective.
The natural process to any crisis is to deny that it is happening, get angry when it does, and then try to alter the situation by bargaining with God and others. The goal is not to try and undo it all; the goal is to make best with what you have. What you cannot do is bypass the grieving process, but you can shorten it by allowing yourself to feel the full force of the loss. The fact that many losses are depressing and painful is reality. It hurts to lose something of value. To say you are doing fine, or that what you lost had not value, is to deny reality. Funerals honor the memory of loved ones, but they also facilitate the grieving process in a safe environment.
questions to consider:
What did Paul lose when he was struck down? How hard do you think it was for Paul to realize that his zeal for God was totally misplaced—leading him to conclude that he was the chief of all sinners?
What are some of the hidden loses when you graduate from high school? Move out of the state? Get dumped by a friend? Lose a limb in an accident?
What happens if we don’t allow ourselves to feel the full brunt of losses?
What imagined or threatened losses have you had to deal with? How did you, or are you, processing that loss?
A prolonged depression can signify an over attachment to people, places, and things that you have no right or ability to control. How can you value those things without becoming overly attached?
Neil T. Anderson is the founder of Freedom in Christ Ministries. He began the ministry in 1989 and continues to spread the message of freedom to this day.