{"id":8606,"date":"2013-07-20T18:28:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-20T18:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8606"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","slug":"things-lost-and-things-gained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8606","title":{"rendered":"Things Lost and Things Gained"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last time I wrote about watching our kids experience grief in this move to Haiti our family is preparing for. That\u00a0has been \u2013\nand will be \u2013 tough.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve been\ncaught off guard by my own grief as well.\u00a0A few days ago I had to finish up a chore at our old house\nin preparation for it being rented again \u2026 or sold \u2026 or whatever God\u2019s plan\nis.\u00a0 A section of the outside garage wall\nhad become water damaged and was simply crumbling away.\u00a0 I had to rip away all the old wood and\nreplace it with new and it took ALL day.\u00a0 Before I left that\nevening, though, there was a second, unrelated job to do that I had been\nputting off.<\/p>\n\n\n

The pool needed to be drained of about 8 inches of stagnant\nwater.\u00a0 This was the first summer in\nseven years that I had not cleaned out that pool and filled it with fresh\nwater.\u00a0 Even last summer, between\nrenters, I had done pool duty.\u00a0 It was\nalways an ugly job \u2013 ridding that thing of all the decaying leaves and the\ngallons upon gallons of mucky, stinky brown water.\u00a0 It always took hours to finish.<\/p>\n\n\n

But as soon as it was all cleaned out and the garden hose\nstarted pumping fresh, clear water into the pool, the kids would put on their\nswim suits and start splashing around in the puddles forming in the bottom of\nthe pool, slipping and sliding this way and that.\u00a0 THAT was the pay off.<\/p>\n\n\n

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2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

This year, though, I decided the liner was too old and there\nwas simply no good reason to fill that pool; nobody was going to use it and we\ncouldn\u2019t afford to run the pump or buy the chlorine anyway.\u00a0 And rather than tearing the liner out\ncompletely, which would only result in a perfectly round, enclosed weed garden,\nI decided to puncture a hole in the liner at the lowest spot and let gravity\ndrain the mosquito nest.<\/p>\n\n\n

So at the end of the day, I took off my shoes, lowered\nmyself into the pool and waded into the ankle deep muck with a utility knife in\nhand.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n

And I stabbed that pool in the heart.<\/p>\n\n\n

I went back into the house to wash up, stood at the kitchen\nsink looking out over the deck at the pool … and just lost it.\u00a0 The flood of emotion completely caught me off\nguard and I cried \u2013 harder than I have cried in a very long time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

The feeling was something akin to taking an old, loyal dog\nto the veterinarian to be put to sleep.\u00a0\nYou\u2019ve told yourself that it has to be done, it\u2019s for the best, there\u2019s\nno avoiding it \u2026 but that moment of finality tears at your heart.<\/p>\n\n\n

But here\u2019s the honest-to-goodness truth: even if it were\npossible to go back, I would not.\u00a0 Recently, I have\nfound myself drawn time and again to Paul’s letter to the Philippians.\u00a0 Chapter 3 is especially resonating with me: \u00a0“But whatever things\nwere gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all\nthings to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I\nhave suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may\ngain Christ,\u00a0and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own\nderived from the<\/i> Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the\nrighteousness which comes<\/i> from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the\nfellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;\u00a0in order that\nI may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”\u00a0\n<\/span>(Phil 3:7-11)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

I am certainly not putting myself in Paul\u2019s spiritual league, only saying that\nI find myself more and more wanting nothing \u2013 not even good things \u2013 to stand in the way of my\nwillingness to follow God\u2019s call on my life and on the life of\u00a0my family.\u00a0 Letting go of things can be difficult, especially when the future is impossible to see.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>(And pretty soon we’ll be saying goodbye to PEOPLE and not just things:\u00a0 Grandmas.\u00a0 Aunts and uncles. Cousins. Best friends.\u00a0 We’re going to need some serious prayer!)\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>To use a well-worn clich\u00e9: It’s not going to be easy, but it will be worth it.\u00a0 God is faithful and we know that nothing compares to being in the center of His will.\u00a0 And sometimes that involves moving\u00a0away from\u00a0the comfortable and familiar…<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>P.S.\u00a0 We leave Florida for Haiti on August 13th, but we are still short in our financial support.\u00a0 If you have not yet joined our support team, would you consider doing it today?\u00a0 Just go to onemissionsociety.org<\/a> to start the process.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last time I wrote about watching our kids experience grief in this move to Haiti our family is preparing for. That\u00a0has been \u2013 and will be \u2013 tough.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve been caught off guard by my own grief as well.\u00a0A few days ago I had to finish up a chore at our old house in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8609,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8606\/revisions\/8609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}