Our neighbor died unexpectedly this morning. She was young enough that we all expected her to live for decades still. She was still working, and her two kids were just stepping into their adult lives. There are no words I can conjure to help her grieving husband, our dear friend and long standing neighbor. I included a reference to him in one of the vignettes at the start of a chapter in The Second Comforter: Conversing with the Lord through the Veil. Condolences are just not enough. Her death is so clear and substantial a loss that we are all left speechless.
This was a loss. An incalculable loss. It shouts with clarity that life is uncertain and death stalks us all. But not every loss is understood in the moment. Sometimes a great loss comes disguised as a victory.
Some terribly tragic moments and lost opportunities come and pass by while we fail to recognize what we witnessed. King Pyrrhus failed to recognize his victories against Rome were leading to his inevitable defeat. I think there are many pyrrhic victories that we foolish celebrate because we do not realize the price we have paid to achieve our short-sighted outcome.
In T&C Section 159 the first proverb says: “The things of God really are of deep import. Only time, experience, and careful, ponderous and solemn thoughts can find them out, provided, of course, there is a real desire to know the things of God accompanied by obedience to His commandments. If you don’t desire them, you won’t ask and won’t receive. And if you do desire them, you will ask and you will obey. It is self-regulated, in that sense. Everyone decides for themselves just how much of an advantage in the world to come they are willing to acquire here.”
Time… not haste. Experience… sometimes very sad experience. Careful, ponderous and solemn thoughts… never hurried, brusque, impatient, and accomplished with clamoring insistence. For the most part, it is necessary for sad experience to be the teacher and hindsight to carefully, ponder and soberly assess the contrast between what is and what might have been.
I have nothing to offer but condolences. But condolences are not enough…