Loss is Gain

A phrase popped into my head at the beginning of the year, as my husband and I were talking about annual goals. We had landed on healthy living, eating right and getting active again, to steward well the resource that is our bodies. As I was thinking about milestones to keep us motivated the phrase popped in, loss is gain. My desire was for us to view the hard things about losing weight as positive. The phrase reminded me of losing everything to gain Christ which is no loss at all. Energized by the motto, I set monthly check-in dates on our shared calendar titled Loss is Gain. It was several months later, as one of those calendar reminders popped up, that it occurred to me how vastly different God had been working that concept out in our lives.

At that point the losses were piling up and not pounds lost. I thought back to August 2024 with the sudden loss of our 10-year-old family cat, Leo, who we had adopted at five weeks old. Not long after that our best friends (we were long-time friends before buying the house next door to them in 2020) told us they were going to sell their house and move to Potosi, an hour away. Their house sold within twenty-four hours on the market and they closed on their new house in early December. Then our oldest child moved away in early January to start her adult life in Minneapolis; a bittersweet moment as the first bird flew the nest.
Around this same time my husband, Brian, lost feeling in most of his fingers on both hands. This was followed quickly by constant radiating nerve pain up both arms and significant loss of hand strength. He struggled to stay sane enduring months of little sleep and constant pain. Praise God, He did get carpal tunnel surgery on both wrists at the end of May which cured the nerve pain. He is still working to regain hand strength and sensation in his fingers. Layered throughout Brian’s carpal tunnel saga was a major conflict with our best friends and tensions with our middle child. The conflict with our friends ended with us conceding to return a much-beloved dog to a person not fit to care for him; our friendship survived but a toll was taken. The tensions with our middle child were of the typical “young adult still living at home” variety and ultimately were the catalyst for her to step out on her own to embark on adult life. We moved her into an apartment over Labor Day weekend and just like that another bird flew the nest.  

But God, amidst it all, is working all things for good. He who saved me will also sanctify me; this means losing myself to gain Christ-likeness. As I think about the losses, I can see gains. I see on the other side of losing the close relationship with our best friends we have been able to foster deeper relationships with several other couples. These friendships have been an encouragement and blessing, pointing us to truth and reminding us of our identity in Christ. On the other side of losing our cat we adopted a five-month-old Corgi who is the dog friend neither Brian nor I knew we would need (this was not the dog we had to return). These small kindnesses have brought light amid many dark days so that rather than constant despair my heart has been reminded repeatedly of our hope in Christ and the sure foundation we have in Him.

My prayer is not just to endure the losses but for them to deepen my love for God, to grow my delight in resting in Him, for Him to be my peace as my heart and mind are in turmoil. Because we will continue to lose; there is no end to it in this life. My desire is to believe more deeply and trust more fully in the truth that God is doing something much bigger and far better than any of us can comprehend. If we will but draw near to Christ and surrender our agenda, we can watch Him do great things. (Philippians 1:21) The best part is we gain sanctification, deeper peace, fuller joy and an overflow of love. These gains empower us to love others as Christ loves, making us shine brightly to glorify God while He does great things in and through us. It’s as we lose ourselves that we find true life, life in Christ. (Galatians 2:20) The treasure we have in Christ is worth incomprehensibly more than anything we can lose, even our life on this earth because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit await us on the other side. You see loss really is gain with God.

For His Glory,