Fearing The Loss

I came across a beautiful post today, on Rachel Held Evans' blog but written by Lisa McCay.

Entitled 'Peace Like A River', the post is about the feelings of fear that came after she gave birth to their first baby. In her final paragraph she includes the following wise words:

I used to feel like a failure that I couldn’t banish that fear altogether – that I never felt “perfectly” peaceful – but I don’t feel that way any more. I’m learning to greet that sort of fear respectfully without bowing before it. I’m learning to use it as a reminder to turn toward gratitude rather than worry.

If you fear losing something let that be a reminder to focus on gratitude for what you have, not on worries about the possibility of one day not having it.

I'm good at imagining things that might go wrong - I guess you could say it's a gift. I have a wife who hardly ever gets home when she says she will - I would definitely say she is a gift. Put the two together and the potential for worry is enormous. I carefully put such fears aside: they are just too crippling if allowed to get a foothold.

But McCay's approach is much more wholesome: when I am worried about losing something (or, especially, someone) I need to remember to be thankful for the good things I have. It is so easy to allow fear of future loss to get in the way of enjoying our present.

God is good; if some of his gifts do turn out to have a time limit, surely that is all the more reason to appreciate them to the full while they are still with us.