Quotes about Loss

Our bodies, our relationships, our lives. We're terrified of losing those things because we think they make us who we are. Fear of loss keeps it all in place. Dying means letting go of all of it, our entire life in the world, to know ourselves beyond the images and relationships apparent in this world.

Because the real wolf comes to kill. To steal. To destroy.

The Lord has a unique way of preparing His servants for His work. It's one that involves transformation. And transformation always involves emptying, suffering, and loss. Humanity's way is to hand you a method. Divinity's way is to hand you a cross.

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

Much of my callousness and invulnerability has come from my refusal to mourn the loss of a soft word and a tender embrace.) Blessed are those who weep and mourn.

Mourning our losses is the first step away from resentment and toward gratitude. The tears of our grief can soften our hardened hearts and open us to the possibility to say "thanks.

Often it seems that beneath the pleasantries of daily life there are many gaping wounds that carry such names as abandonment, betrayal, rejection, rupture, and loss.

The younger son's return takes place in the very moment that he reclaims his sonship, even though he has lost all the dignity that belongs to it. In fact, it was the loss of everything that brought him to the bottom line of his identity. He hit the bedrock of his sonship. In retrospect, it seems that the prodigal had to lose everything to come into touch with the ground of his being.

The more capable you are of mourning the loss of the old place and letting go of the pain that lies there. You cannot mourn something that has not died.

In every arrival there is a leave-taking; in every reunion there is a separation; in each one's growing up there is a growing old; in every smile there is a tear; and in every success there is a loss. All living is dying, and all celebration is mortification too.

When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply.

On the one hand the younger son realizes that he has lost the dignity of his sonship, but at the same time that sense of lost dignity makes him also aware that he is indeed the son who had dignity to lose, (pp. 49).