There is an upside to loss. After a post office run to ship some hats off, I took my boys (Drake 7, Jonathan, 5) to Chik-Fil-A for breakfast. As usual, we had some interesting dialogue. Today it happened to be grape jelly and strawberry jam. Everybody knows that a chicken biscuit "ain't" a chicken biscuit without strawberry jam. If you're into grape...fine, God made you different than the rest of us :)
ENTER KIM
That's when Kim chimes in at the table in front of us and starts giving me the rundown on using honey instead. I noticed immediately how vibrant and happy she seemed. I'm always interested in other peoples story when they're open to share. So we chatted for about 15 minutes prior to her rushing off to go teach her class at Remington College.
Kim is a professor of communications. Which is probably why she had no problem inserting herself into my conversation with my knuckleheaded boys. Somehow, we got into a conversation about family and business. Kim has had her fair share of trials in life, from losing a child in late term pregnancy and another lost stillborn. She even lost a business 5 or 6 years ago that she and her husband sank their lifesavings into.
As I'm sitting listening intently as she tells me all the things she'd lost and the vast amount left unsaid, all of my losses seemed really small in comparison to everything Kim has been through.
THE UPSIDE OF LOSS
Yet her smile, her passion for life and her inner resolve with God is strong. This is the upside of loss. It's grit. It's the ability to stand. The ability to look at everything life has thrown at you and still be able to know that God loves you deeply. That all the world winds that beat against our house of faith will not blow it down, but prepare you for display.
She is the image of beauty and struggle. A grand display of what it means to be a child and a servant. A child that God loves and a servant that God tests; and in the end we finish as Paul did:
2 Timothy 4:7
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
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