When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You. In God, whose word I praise, In God I have put my trust; I shall not be afraid. What can mere man do to me?  Psalm 56:3

How long can you keep going under pressure before you give up?  How many losses can you sustain before a particular one seems too much to bear?  The threshold of abdication is different for each of us.  I know someone who lost one of her children to cancer, and she never recovered.  She lives with a perpetual suspension of emotions and is internally numb.

But I know another woman who lost one child in childbirth and another in a custody battle. She lives alone and is essentially childless.  Though she is acquainted with the valley of hopelessness and has flirted with feeling total despair, she leans on God for the grace and grit to get up each day and live.  She is a wise old soul who gives gifts of compassion, advocacy, and wisdom to those who feel that no one fully understands their pain.  She searches for those lost in themselves and is able to look deeply into their eyes, see their soul, and call them out.

Losses don’t just involve death.  There can be the loss of a dream.  The loss of a marriage.  The loss of a friend.  A loss of respect.  A loss of opportunity.  The loss of dreams.  The loss of years.  A loss of health.  Some are irreparable on this side of heaven. 

If what I’m losing, or whom I’m losing, is the center of my world, despair is close by.  But if God is the center of my world, He is the Anchor who promises to hold me together.  He sings over me and the song gives me strength.

There are days I see the edge of an abyss.  Before I fall, catch me and keep me. Amen