Your 2021 Losses Could Be Grace In Disguise

In response to Coffee Challenge: Why I want to be a better me in 2022

We are about to turn the calendar to another year. Will it be a continuation of losses as we’ve experienced for the last two?

So many have lost so much through the Covid pandemic:

· their own health,

· loved ones,

· jobs, and

· peace of mind.

Even as we work to recover, we risk more losses.

A couple of years ago just as we began the pandemic, I was under equal stress for personal reasons related to a family members’ mental health.

I was so worried about them.

When I’m suffering under stress, I tend to lose track of things. The item I commonly have the most difficulty keeping up with is my keys. Now, since this is a habit I’ve come to know about myself, I made a conscious decision to keep extra track of my keys.

And I had been doing such a good job, too!

Until I didn’t.

Fear of unlocking doors

Of all items, why do I lose keys? Maybe it’s a metaphor for fear of unlocking closed doors to find only skeletons on the other side. Practically, though, misplacing keys causes loss of time and increased distress and anxiety. My pain was even more significant because I committed to being ever-so-careful of keeping up with my keys.

How did this happen, I ask myself?

I was so careful.

Love in a different form

I tried to console myself. I came across a story at about the same time as this event written by the Bohemian author Franz Kafka about a lost doll.

At the end of the story, he writes:

“Everything you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form.”

When I’ve lost keys before, love did return to me in a different form — it came through as Grace.

My family takes time out of their schedule to help me hunt for keys.

Or, sheepishly, I have admitted my fallibility of losing a tool that helps me be productive. I’ve reported to two employers my carelessness with their property.

Each time, the reaction has been, “by when do you need a new set of keys?”

Whew! No pink slip was pushed under the locked door, but understanding that people make mistakes and I’m a person.

I have been like the widow in the parable of the lost coin. During Biblical times, women wore coins as adornments to keep them safe. I have worn my keys on lanyards around my neck.

Even with this personal connection, the widow lost one of her coins, and I have lost my keys. The widow swept and dusted her home until she found her coin. I retract my steps and, often, my keys are exactly where I had left them.

But what about the times when I had to give up the keys for lost?

My memory and vision limitations blind me from finding what is lost.

I have had family members lost to various manifestations of illness. They became lost in their illness. Their disease blinds me, and I lost sight of the person caught up in the condition.

Similarly, I became so caught up in finding the lost keys; I lost track of myself. Yet, God knows where the lost item or person is.

I do not need to count the number of hairs on my head. God has already undertaken this task.

God knows where the lost keys are, and God sees the person who is lost in their obsession — whether it’s finding keys or finding whatever.

“Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” Luke 12:7.

Shedding old ways

When something has been irretrievably lost or lost for so long that the time it takes to find it interferes with getting on with life, I need to see a different solution.

When my keys are replaced, they will be a shinier version.

Sometimes healing an illness means shedding old ways. God wants us to shed what we’ve outgrown.

The good news is I eventually did find those lost keys. On a hunch, I returned to a restaurant where my family had been over the weekend.

A homeless young man approached me as I walked into the restaurant and asked for money on my way in. I didn’t have any cash on me, so I had to turn him down. But when I went inside to retrieve my keys, I bought the young man a meal. He sincerely thanked me for the kindness I showed him.

Nothing wasted in God’s economy

So, maybe the keys I lost became the keys to the kingdom for someone else. Perhaps, an inconvenience for me became a moment of divine intervention for someone else. As it’s been said: “nothing in God’s economy is wasted.”

Grace.

I paid forward.

Best that I could.

Even during times of immense stress, such as we have experienced these past two years, we can still extend the hand of grace to someone else.

So, in what ways will you be the sweet hand of Grace as we enter 2022?