How to Count Loss as Gain
During college, I worked as an orientation leader for two consecutive years. I spent the summers before and after graduation working eighteen-hour days.
It was the hardest work I’ve ever done. We lived and worked on campus, and our coworkers were our roommates. It felt like there was no escape. We cried together and because of each other. One time, I may have even yelled at a coworker for falling asleep in front of the copy machine, leaving me alone for an hour. My boss had me ride with her to an event so we could chat about the things I wasn’t doing well. I cried and apologized.
There were lots of tears those two summers.
They were also two of my best summers. Even when we were exhausted, my coworkers and I spent many hours laughing and having fun together. We had dance parties, watched movies, and spent evenings playing board games in our common areas. It was so much fun. There were hikes, lunch outings, and traditions established during those years that I still remember vividly almost a decade later.
Although we faced challenges, there was joy.
I lost a lot those summers. I lost sleep, my temper, my patience. I lost my room key and my dog, who had to be given away. I lost control when I felt overwhelmed.
What’s interesting about those summers is that it isn’t the losses I remember most. The gains are what come to mind first. I gained friendships. I gained skills that would prepare me for every job I’ve held since. I gained a sense of self, I gained independence, and I gained victory over some struggles. Those summers, even thought they were hard, made me realize that it is the gains we need to focus on, rather than the losses.
I’m no stranger to loss. I recently wrote a book called Four Letter Words: Finding Hope in a Tiny Wild Life. So much of it focuses on loss. I lost parts of my childhood to sexual abuse. I lost friends and a piece of my innocence when I got pregnant at fifteen and had an abortion. I lost a part of my self-worth when I ran away and my mother didn’t fight for me to come home. I lost even more of my innocence when I was raped at eighteen.
My editor, Shannon, sent me chapters as she edited, and as thing after thing happened to me on those pages, I felt compelled to tell her, “I promise you there comes a point where things start to look hopeful.”
There was a clear bottom to my loss, where one more thing might have broken me beyond repair. That’s where the gains began, where this tiny wild life of mine finally started to make sense. It is where I finally began to see God and his vast love for me, in spite of tremendous loss. It’s where he revealed to me that he didn’t think I was unworthy or worthless. It is where I heard him tell me I was and am redeemed.
It’s where he spoke to me a verse that I now carry deep in my heart, one I pray often when I think about reaching people and telling them my story, when I think about how Jesus paid the debt for my pain and sorrow and gave me hope when I had none. Jesus is speaking to his disciples about how persecution will come; after explaining some of the things they should expect, he tells them, “What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on mountaintops” (Matt. 10:27 ESV).
When I was in that deep, horrible place, the place where I thought any more loss would result in my destruction, Jesus reached out and tenderly whispered how much he loved me and cared for me, how he died for me. I had to hear those words over and over again because I couldn’t wrap my mind around them. I felt so unworthy, but the more I heard them, the more they felt real and not just like words on a page. The more I heard them, the more I felt like I had gained so much.
I’m never going to have a loss-free life, but those early losses aren’t what define me anymore. I see that through them, I gained much. Jesus gave me life and freedom in his name. He has allowed me to speak to others who are hurting and grieving, to help them hope. Can you believe it? He took every broken shred of my life and said, “Someone else meant this for evil, but God means it for good, to bring it about that people should be kept alive,” (see Gen. 50:20 ESV). He has given me such abounding, overflowing joy that I know I would keep the losses if it meant keeping the gains.
Maybe you see yourself in these words. You may feel lost, my friend, but you’ve also gained.
The things Jesus whispered gently in my ear on those darkest nights? He means them for you, too.
He loves you.
You are redeemed.
Krista Wilbur lives in Southern California, where she’s spent nearly her whole life. She works at an administrator at her church. Krista loves bright colors, dogs, reading, cross stitching, and making new friends. Her first book, Four Letter Words, is available on Amazon.
Photograph © Bethany Beams, used with permission
