Loss is Gain

I just saw the movie Soul Surfer, the story of surfer Bethany Hamilton. It gave me quite a bit to think about and now I would like to share my ponderments with you.

Have you ever lost something and it changed your life forever? Bethany Hamilton lost her arm and it changed her's. She could have let it change her for the worse, but she made it change her for the better. When faced with loss she refused to let it effect her negatively. Instead, she used it to excel in her sport as well as change her perspective on life.

I too, have lost. However, I didn't loose what I lost as a child, or a teen...I was born with a loss. I was born with a deformed heart, and as a result, I am missing the use of a valve. There is nothing worse than not being able to do every day activities. For Bethany, it was a challenge to cut food and put her hair up. For me, it was a challenge to breathe.

As anyone who has gone through a loss, Bethany asked, "Why would God let this happen?" I have asked the same. Why would God allow someone to be born with such a condition that made walking up a flight of stairs nearly impossible? Why would God create something so messed up? What kind of God would impair his own creation? Here's why....so that his creation could learn the valuable lesson of love. If I was born normal, I would have no reason to love others. Knowing loss has given me the desire to give back to others what they have lost. In the movie Soul Surfer a reporter asks Bethany if she would go back and change what happened if she could. Her reply was this: "No, I wouldn't change a thing, because then I wouldn't be here talking to you, I can embrace more people now then I could with two arms."

I may be missing the use of a valve, but because of my loss, I know how to love deeper than most people with 4 properly working valves.

Loss, if looked at from the right perspective, can lead to the ability to love more sincerely and deeply than you ever could before.

One must have enormous strength to love with all of their heart and that strength must come from the Lord. I shared the following verse with a crowd of about 500 college students one day in chapel:

"..there was given to me a thorn in the flesh...For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, 'My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.' Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me...For when I am weak, then am I strong."

Those who have lost the most, have the most. Those who have been too weak to walk or even stand, are the strongest. And those who learn that with God nothing is impossible are the ones capable of anything.