Magic and Loss
As our family emerged from the pandemic hollow, the first sign of life was the start of the boys’ baseball season. For a few weeks in April and May, we spent our evenings eating concession stand food, listening to the ding of aluminum bats, and dragging overtired baseball sisters to bed after a few late nights. It felt in a word—normal.
Neither Will nor Ben are committed to the baseball life in a harried, all-consuming way. They just want to play ball. They want to get a little better each time they play. And they want to be part of a team. We struck gold this year with our coaches—mild-mannered dads and grandpas who love the game and want to see kids have fun. In the end, both of our teams had losing records.
We had conversations after games about what went right, what went wrong, and what was plain flip-of-the-coin chance. At this level of play, the difference between a win and a loss is a couple bad plays or one inning of wild pitching, so sometimes the scoreboard didn’t reflect the reality of the admirable teamwork and growth that happened on the field.
Several times, I found myself saying to one boy or the other, “You got on base every time you were at bat, and you made four defensive plays. The other team just scored more runs.”
The reality is that the losing season sometimes looks worse on paper than it actually is.
Frankly, growing up I wasn’t on any losing teams. On both the soccer and softball fields, my teams dominated our opponents, resulting in an uneasy relationship with failure. I grew into adulthood with no sense of how to lose gracefully. I also didn’t learn any of the lessons about what it looks like to move forward in the face of loss. On this side of wisdom, I’m grateful that my kids are learning lessons in grace, persistence, and heartache now in an arena where the consequences are pretty low stakes.
A couple of weeks ago, I received a text from a friend/mentor saying she wanted to catch up by phone as soon as I could make some time. The next day, we chatted for about twenty minutes while my kids played at the children’s museum in the background. She asked about our upcoming cross-country move, and I yammered on about the details for a few minutes before asking how she and her husband were faring. After a lengthy pause, she said, “I needed to talk to you about something. A few months ago, I was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. I’ve been going through treatment, and things are about as good as they are going to get.”
As my girls and their friends ran around the pretend grocery store, giggling together and taking turns playing customer, all the air was completely sucked out of the room around me. I told my friend I was so sorry this is happening, and I thanked her for telling me. I repeated the details of a prior conversation—that we had every intention of traveling to the northeast where she lives sometime during our assignment to the DC area. I added that I would move that timeline up a bit and get there to see her as soon as possible. I said I was so sorry again.
Her response did not add any air to the sense of suffocation. “I’ve lived a good life. I have. I’ve done all the things I wanted. The real tragedy is when little kids get these kinds of diagnoses. This is not what I want. It’s bad, but the tragedy would be if I got here and didn’t have such a good life to look back on.”
The reality is sometimes the losing season is exactly as bad as it feels.
Loss, big or small, is life.
I love what Kate Bowler has to say about loss (and frankly everything she has to say about everything). After a stage IV diagnosis at 35, Bowler lived to tell the honest tale of what it looks like to confront death at such a young age. If you aren’t familiar with her work, find any of her books or check out her podcast called “Everything Happens.”
If you find yourself in a moment or a season or what might feel like a lifetime of loss, this blessing from Kate is for you:
blessed are you, who feel the wound of fresh loss. or of the loss… no matter how fresh… that still makes your voice crack all these years later.
you who are stuck in the impossibility. frozen in disbelief. how can this be? it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
blessed are you, fumbling around for answers or truths to make this go down easier. who demand answers or are dissatisfied with the shallow theology and trite platitudes.
blessed are we, who, instead, demand a blessing. because we have wrestled with God and are here. wounded. broken. changed.
blessed are we, who keep parenting. who keep our marriages and friendships and jobs afloat. who stock the pantry…
because… what choice do we have? but to move forward with a life we didn’t choose. with a loss we thought we couldn’t live without.
one small step. one small act of hope at a time.
Thanks for reading, friends.