What if I lose this good thing?

What if I lose this good thing?

It’s the question we always ask without ever saying it. We live asking this question.

That’s why I pick a location with a direct flight from Kansas City for my getaway with Nate. (I don’t say it out loud, but something has told me I might need to get home quickly.)

That’s why I rarely anticipate trips for longer than 24 hours before my departure time. Surely, the flu could descend on our home.

We didn’t go out to dinner when I signed my first book contract, and I didn’t tell anyone I was pregnant until months after I saw those two lines. I told myself these things are sacred and need to be held close (and they were, and they did) … but I also wonder if I was responding to that question … that age-old question:

what if I lose this good thing?

For those of you who have been a part of SOAR (my more private writing space for those who raise their hands and want to read a bit more of my candid writing more frequently), you know that Nate and I just turned the page on the hardest year we’ve yet known. Chronic health issues stretched across our family, plus profound loss that may never be found.

The gift of time and history is that because this isn’t the first hardest year of our lives, we have tools we didn’t have in 2019, the last hardest year of our lives, and 2007, the one before that. And, more than tools, we have a history of free-falling (because what else can you do when the world shoves you from a tall cliff) into the safe arms of God. I don’t say that lightly … our God let us drop, steep, with the wind knocked out of us and our lungs in duress …

… and He also caught us.

So this newfound hard isn’t so new.

But I’ve noticed a trend that comes after the hard — a trend I’m reaching to break. I saddle myself with this question as if it is a parachute:

What if I lose this good thing?

I saddle myself with despair — a kind of expectation that leaves no room for anticipation.

I see the pendulum swing from the youthful zeal of my twenties — when hardly anyone I knew was sick, and risks were a thrill, not a threat — to the careful caution of my forties — when I could dress up pessimism as spiritual, subtly believing I would always know “hard.”

It seems neither of those stances serves me well … and neither is a suitable landing place.

Last month, I shared this with you: “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure” (Psalm 16:8-9).

The NKJV says: “my flesh also will rest in hope.”

The Amplified version: “my body too will dwell [confidently] in safety.”

Anticipation — it’s in the baby who coos or my dog who rolls over, waiting for a pat on her belly. It’s in the three-year-old who crawls onto your lap and nestles under your chin or the teenager who comes in from school, drops his bag and knows he has attentive listeners for the stories that came from that day.

Anticipation is a sign of security … rest, safety. A fruit, if you will, of a life slowly learning that even the free-falls that aren’t chosen can still be caught.

It’s not the slipshod way of our youth or the calculated discipline of adulthood.

Anticipation is a by-product of a life that’s learned to trust. To free-fall, even when shoved.

We can’t marshal it, but we can look back — right back into the hardship that we suspect might have stolen the carefree “anticipation” of our youth (that really wasn’t anticipation at all, but was the happy-go-lucky nature of a yet untouched life) — and note the ways God came.

In this very small practice of seeing Him show up in the life that you feel like He hasn’t shown up for, your heart begins to trust.

It looks like this:

This year, some of the deepest cries of my heart were shouted into what felt like a void — echoing against the cave walls of my story. Pages and pages of words spilled out in my journal, with very little response by way of circumstances.

But … but …

… we experienced the most brilliant spring. The magnolia veritably paraded in my front yard. Char’s curls flew wild in the wind as she became an outdoors adventurer, but without shedding her desire to cuddle. Eden and Hope spread their wings and adventured, themselves. Nate and I fell more in love. I found a candle I could burn for all hours of the day and not tire of. And a new favorite blanket. The Psalms were an anchor for me, line by line.

You see, God was moving and meeting us and putting Himself on display … yes, and at the same time, my big prayers for big things seemingly ricocheted in the dark of the cave of my life. Both happened.

And seeing both gave my heart a few more inches toward trust.

Friends, we are not forever bound to the question what if I lose this good thing at the sight of the first sign of dawn after a dark night. Instead, we are being made to be the watchful ones … the Anticipators. The ones who have seen Him in the fire sky at sunset after a painful day — and so we start to expect to find Him in even the losses we didn’t imagine.

God has something tucked away in your new year … the new year that may also include a job loss, a diagnosis, an unexpected move, or the abrupt ending of a friendship.

What if I lose this good thing can turn into where might He show up?

Imagine a life of looking forward to the next thing in front of you rather than fearing its eventual departure.

Anticipation flows from a trusting heart. And trust comes from a heart that notices … Him, even in the fall off the cliff.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

and do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him,

and he will make straight your paths (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Until next month,

Sara

P.S. I wrote this brief email series for our new year for those of you in the middle of that free fall, with a life that’s thrust you where you don’t want to go.