I wrote this last week Thursday, August 22nd: "How I can face loss of everything and even my own life"

As hard as Cleo's death is going to be for me, and I will cry (more, I already have) and looking down the road, I will, unless I die unexpectedly, lose more; my family is aging; my Grandma is nearly 90, her sister older than this.  Somehow I have learned something that I did not know when I was just 21 and my first spiritual mother, Aunt Elaine, died.  I remember finding my journal a few years ago and I found that I had written in it that I did not know how I could face her death; it was just 2 weeks before she died that I finally admitted that I could lose her to the cancer that was consuming her.  I was deeply devastated by her death.  I was unable to go to the funeral but the loss of her as a Mother figure was the greatest loss I had and I was unprepared.  I had no idea how to grieve or what to do with my emotions.  I barely passed that semester of school; it took some months before I was more stable again.  It was a large loss and one that made me promise to myself that I would never allow myself to be in denial like that again but instead would try to be ready, to admit what could happen, would happen.  

In general, I have done this; I knew my Aunt Karen was very possibly going to die and she did, about a year or so later.  I knew that Cleo, based on earlier changes, was going to go; it's still shocking how it is happening after her being stable for 3 years after her liver disease diagnosis.  

But there is something I am learning that that is this:

Because of my faith in God and specifically in His loving-kindness and mercy, I know I can face any and all losses, including, one day, the loss of my own life.  No one, as they say, leaves here alive.  

As hard as the losses will be, and I will have to (unless I die suddenly and unexpectedly) prepare myself to lose not only everything I own and everyone I have known, but that I will have to die myself and trust myself to God's mercy. 

I used to think that facing such deep and searing loss would (ironically perhaps) kill me, would be too much to bear.  Now, even though the waves of grief are real and will come, underneath this, I realize: with God, I can face every loss.  With God I can give everything to Him, entrust everything I own, everyone I love and my own soul to Him.  With God it is better to lose my life and gain Christ, the only One who I can never lose and who will never lose me.