If you worked your way through high school and college, living on bean sprouts and Ramen noodles, understanding the perspective of young people popularly described at Snowflakes is challenging. Your worlds aren’t the same.
Being poor has its rewards. So does being financially comfortable. I’ve been both. Challenges wear different faces, but perspective determines how you react to them. Immensely wealthy people can be relationship paupers, while church mouse-poor families may be extravagantly blanketed by love.
In 1973, my clothes closet was a dozen sixteen-penny nails driven into bare two-by-four studs. By 1986, my closet was a designer affair with cubbies, countertop, and a special place for boots. Now I live in a barn.
The size and contents of my closet never added to, or detracted from, the quality of my life. Years were blessed (or not) because of the way I interpreted my circumstances (perspective) and who shared them with me.
More specifically, my best and worst of times correlate directly to the state of my relationship with Jesus Christ. When God didn’t provide what I wanted, I was miserable. When I didn’t trust Him, I was on my own.
.Which never turns out well.
The most important elements in your world are relationships. When relationships end, your world changes, in ways both small and large.
Relationships are attachments. When one is severed, a piece of you peels away. The wound is real. Whether by circumstance or death; your world rocks. What happens next depends on the degree to which you trust God.
Most relationships, however short or long, are gifts with time frames. Few make it from birth to death with even one continuous relationship. Each one is temporary.
Perhaps I knew that, but didn’t become aware of it until recently. People naturally fall into grief, anger, and misery when they lose someone they love.
Why did God let this happen?
Why did he leave me?
Why did God take him (her) away from me?
Our default position is dwelling on the loss, not the gift. It’s normal. It’s human. It happens. Sometimes we do both.
My lowest point came when I lost the first person to know and love me for myself. My family didn’t, so it was a biggie relationship. When it ended, I was angry with God. I rebelled. Given the choice between God and him; there’s no question who I’d choose.
It wasn’t God.
Even so, I knew that the reason for the awesome depth of pain was the immensity of the gift of relationship I’d enjoyed – for a season. We’d planned a lifetime together, but didn’t get to live it.
As mad as I was at God, there was gratitude. In my brokenness, I was still thankful for the experience; for the gift.