When Missing Is All There Is

“Often when we realise how precious those seconds are, it’s too late for them to be captured because the moment has passed. We realise too late.”

— Cecelia Ahern

You know the feeling when you know a moment is significant, yet it feels pretty banal? We get the feeling we should be making more of it, but inevitably we don’t. Then there is the feeling that there is significance in the moment and we can’t grasp it. Then, again, there are the moments we sense no significance at all, but later we find that all the significance in the world belonged to that moment.

We never can tell just how much we will miss someone or something until they are or it is gone. We can never predict how we will feel. When it’s too late we cruel ourselves for not making more of the moment at the time. But this is unfair. Still, cruelling ourselves might be the only thing we can do—the only thing we can control.

When it comes to missing someone or something, life is nasty.

When it comes to missing someone or something, we cannot escape. We are destined to feel the full force of our sorrow. It doesn’t seem to get much more hopeful than that.

But there is hope if we can hold on to the invisibility presented within the idea of hope. What we must recognise is that life is now, and forever will be, different. We don’t have to enjoy that fact, but we do need, eventually, to accept it.

The Benefit of Repetition

One thing we have the benefit of, again, whether we like it or not, is the phenomenon of repetition. The more we may miss someone, yet are honest before God and trusted others, the more we practice the coming to terms with life as it now has become.

Missing someone or something is testimony to our love, and still that love has boundless energy, but alas, at the present moment, it has no place to land. Love like that clambers in the darkness, yet, as it continues to ‘be’ love, not refusing its central identity, it does eventually find safe places to land.

Having faith in repetition, in order to keep trying new things with which to accommodate the lostness in this love, determines our hope. A hope that doesn’t give up is not quickly disappointed, but it has reason to hold out in faith for a miracle. And miracles do more frequently occur than we realise.

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The process of missing someone or something so very dear is dark and seems ceaseless. The bigger our faith the more certainty of hope we have for overcoming the depths of our pain. Pray, so the strength of your love would not diminish, and for energy to sustain the journey.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.