Are you even aware of the losses in your life? This is the Daily Disturbance Podcast with Anthony Fahidian. Any loss means death, like a loss of a dream holiday at this time of canceled trips. And any loss or death causes grief.
Are you even aware of the losses of your life? And for your own losses, have you given yourself the time, the process to grieve? Have you allowed your loved ones or colleagues in their own experiences of loss to grieve? Let's do this quick but revealing exercise on losses you may have had or are experiencing at this particular time.
Let me mention 12, okay? 12 kinds of losses and check that which applies to you in your current or recent experience. Let's set a couple of years as a timeline. Although some effects of losses do linger for a longer time, but I'll leave you to judge that.
Just remember, revealing is part of healing, okay? So check that which applies to you. Number one, loss of job or business. Number two, loss of a job, opportunity.
It was there, but it got lost along the way. Number three, loss of a loved one, condolences. Number four, loss of something, an object, an item important to you. Number five, loss of a lifestyle.
Number six, loss of funds. Hello? Number seven, loss of trust. Eight, loss of personal health or a major decline perhaps.
Number nine, loss of friends or companionship, the actual presence at this time. Number 10, loss of a romantic emotional relationship. Number 11, loss of a big hope, a big dream. Number 12, loss of a connection with your God, however you conceive your God to be.
If you check the majority of those losses, you need to give yourself some slack, some space, some time, and perhaps the right process to grieve. Unfortunately, many have the tendency to harden one's heart, to numb the pain, to ignore its existence, or to pretend it isn't hurting. May I suggest something? Just admit it.
Feel it. Share it with a trusted friend if you can. Holding back without taking opportunities to release? Well, like a volcanic eruption, that's a disaster waiting to happen.
Be honest with yourself first. Your understanding and your assessment may need some enlightenment eventually, but what you currently feel is real. Mandy Hill, you can't really heal from a loss until you allow yourself to really feel the loss. And don't let anyone describe, quantify, diagnose your loss for you completely, while other opinions or even expertise may help you.
In the end, only you can fully feel and absorb the impact of a loss in your life. I recall the feeling after my closing conference message of our international congress in Boston as world president of ISAC International many, many, many years ago. I was so tired, unbelievably stressed, unimaginably discouraged, seeing the worst of politics and power at play. I could hardly speak.
What a way to deliver what should have been one of my most motivational messages in my presidency. It was a mess. I was a mess. And what a loss.
And while I received so many messages of comfort and encouragement after, I knew no one could grasp how I truly felt that day. One of the many times, the reality of the statement, and I quote, it's lonely at the top, truly hit home. I still get weak in the knees and uncomfortable in my gut when I remember it. And that was three and a half decades ago.
One of the least comforting words anyone can tell someone hurting from a loss, and I quote, I know just how you feel. No, most likely they don't. Because while they may have an idea, they can't with all confidence say they truly know. To know is to apprehend fully.
And no, they cannot possibly apprehend fully to get it completely what someone else is going through. Either the circumstances aren't exactly the same, or the human capacity to take the loss is completely different. Here's a tip. When you do have enough facts, or are unsure you have a credible grasp of someone else's situation, do not intervene.
I have to remind myself of this. At least, not at once. First, intercede. And I quote Romans 8.26.
In the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness, we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through our worldless groans. After all, as Isaiah reminds us, He was acquainted with grief. And that's God, Jesus Himself. Now, familiar with suffering and experienced in the worst kind of pain.
Which is a prescription for you and me in our times of loss. To come to God first, Psalm 159.23 encourages us. For what? A good reading of our actual situation.
What else? To test the condition of our hearts. And for a revelation on how to move forward. And I quote, search me, O God, and know my heart.
Test me. Know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting.
It's important to know that there are losses of the past impacting us now that we still have no idea about. It is in the realm of our unconscious, in detail aware. For example, in psychodynamics of human relationships, even institutional culture, the principle of what? Transference.
Where we allow our past, good, bad, and ugly, to transfer its impact then to our present situation. Now, so that day I lost trust in my primary caregiver at the age of seven, I unconsciously transferred to my present authority at work by doubting his or her sincerity and living out a loss or a grief that has nothing to do with the present-day person and situation. It does not discount the need to still recover, but it doesn't help that someone else is dragged in the process. And who becomes a recipient?
A new victim, unfortunately, of the consequences of that painful loss before. The key to come to all truth, to bring the unconscious to the conscious level where we can more properly deal with it, reflection. Reflection is the key to the unconscious. And positive disturbances help us with more meaningful reflections in life.
And, oh, can I clarify one thing? Time does not always heal all wounds. It may help, and that helps to be appreciated. But not all that can possibly help are actually equipped to fully heal.
Often it's a combination of different efforts that lead to holistic healing. Besides, it's good to be reminded that only in the afterlife, in the final kingdom come, that all will be well. To think of it now, there will still be loss in heaven. But it will be a loss of what?
Of all the negative things of this broken world, the natural earth. Loss of tears. Loss of death. Loss of mourning.
Loss of crying. And pain, for I quote, the old order of things has passed away. End quote. Revelation 21, verse 4.
Revelation 21, verse 4.