Loss
“It is awesome to talk to God,
but what is even better is when He talks to me.
-Bob Sorge
The floods have lifted up, O Lord,
The floods have lifted up their voice;
The floods lift up their waves.
The Lord on high is mightier
Than the noise of many waters,
Than the mighty waves of the sea.
-Psalm 93:3-4
I was focused on driving my grocery cart and in my own myopic world when I heard a voice speak my direction. “You have beautiful hair, Ma’am.” I looked up, full of surprise that he was looking at me, and then peripherally noted there were no other people he would be addressing. First, my hair is not something I’ve ever considered to land in the “beautiful” category. Dealing with cycles of hair loss and hair thinning for twenty years has not helped this impression. When the topic of conversation would center around hair color, mine wasn’t referred to as “the color of wheat” or something lovely like that; more often than not, it was deemed and doomed to the “dirty blonde” category. My personal opinion is that phrase be banned from our language, along with the commonly quipped phrase “Debbie downer.” No matter the surface value of this encounter, it served to feed a part of my soul-man that felt it could never measure up to the cultural definition of beauty. But this stranger’s random gift shattered the lie that had fed me and reminded me of my value and worth to my Creator.
It is so easy to become distracted by things in life that are actually misconceptions of the truth that God speaks over us. My own lamentable hair loss pales in comparison with one who has lost their hair due to chemotherapy. Losing a board game is obviously not on the same scale as losing a job. And then, of course, comes the deep grief of losing a loved one to relational conflicts or death.
With each scenario, human nature tends to label ourselves as having lesser value simply due to the experience that looks so different than the next person walking life’s road. And it is curious to me that the enemy doesn’t even need to work very hard: all it takes is one whispered lie of self-deprecation. After all, he built up just one physical facet of me and amplified it, extorting the lie for years, like Psalm 93 alludes to—a flood roaring in my ears. My affection was set on what this culture values instead of what God the Father values. How much more will the devil extort from us when faced with difficult circumstances? 1 Peter 5:8 admonishes us to:
“Be alert and of sober mind,
because your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion,
looking for someone to devour.”
Sometimes, he doesn’t have to roar very loud; he lets the lies of our culture do that for us. At times, our own echo chamber of negative thoughts is just set on repeat.
To rally myself when accepting a God-value over my life is one thing; to rally myself when walking a life of fatiguing circumstances is a victory. The circumstances in our life that we are confronted with on a daily basis has a tendency to define us; but when we daily roll the losses we encounter onto the shoulders of a God who loves us fiercely and intimately, we learn to walk in His strength and not our own. In the midst of the roar of life’s waves, we can believe that the “Lord is mightier than the noise…” (Psalm 93:4).