I know when my cat poppy dies, I will feel sadness, yet, I have already let her go in a way even as she lives. The same is true of everything and everyone else I love or are important to me. Several months ago, to a friend, my oft complaint was, what I am I supposed to do if I lose poppy, and “Lady Erskine” is still not back, so I have nothing or no one. I always end up in places or new perceptions our outlooks without remembering how it happened, but I do know the last several months, the question above became moot. Yes, poppy is here, and I enjoy her while she is here, yet in a very real way, she is already lost to me. All we have to do, is acknowledge in our heart and understand the reality of everything and everyone in this life is perishable and temporary, and that one day they will die. If they die as we live, we are already to let them go when we don’t just merely assent to that, but hold it deep in our hearts as a fact that is inevitable and are ready for it even if its the next hour. Poppy disappearing on Saturday night was the manner in which I thought she’d died that was so upsetting. Like I had failed her at the end by not making her feel safe or being there to comfort or protect her. But if she died next week, or even tomorrow, there will be sadness, but I have already let her go, even as I love her while she lives., I’m not sure how God enabled me to do that, but I also know its true of other things I love. By the world’s standards I am dirt poor, and poverty stricken; even by most Christian standards, yet as I was just remarking to a friend, to me, I am rich. Because God has enabled me to live upon the invisible God when I have very little else, and I know that has to be where my joy comes from when as ill as this and so little in this world to take the edge off all my afflictions. But even as the things I love live, and I love them as I live, I have also been enabled to pass a sentence of death upon them, and that’s how I am able to live upon God that is invisible, in the worst of circumstances. I thank God for his amazing grace, as these things have made my life enjoyable again, by living on things invisible. I wouldn’t swap my afflictions for all the riches in the world, because this prison has been turned into a palace, that is paved with Gold, and where God abides with me, and my two cats. The riches that the world offers, would be a poor exchange. I have been richer in the past than now, and yet, I remember that emptiness that torment, that anguish that used to feel like it was destroying me. And now when less rich, and with very little to keep me warm in the worst of circumstances and quite dreadful illness, I am fuller than I have ever been in my entire life. We serve an awesome God. And while every living thing in this life is perishable and temporary, God will never leave us or foresake us.

This quote of Bunyan’s that I have posted before, completely nails it. And if we are ever to suffer rightly, when we suffer extremely, it IS the only way to do it. God got me to that place before I first came across this quote. But as soon as I read it, I knew that is what he had done for me, and by grace worked out in my life.
But, I wouldn’t advise folks to wait to do this, until they are in the place of being given the news you have an incurable illness, and perhaps by that time your life partner and spouse maybe already dead. The time to set about, doing the work below, is while we have things and riches to pass a sentence of death upon, so that when faced with the reality of it, it is already embedded in our heart, and we have already let go and have died to everything we currently cherish. I am blessed that God enabled me when at the point already. But if not for his doing so, I would still be drowning in afflictions, with every day an agony or anguish instead of feasting on the invisible God and being filled and rich and the place I once saw as a prison, would not now be the palace it has become. Yet God abides here, so why wouldn’t it be a palace, as that is whrere Kings abide in any case.

if ever I would suffer rightly, I must first pass a sentence of death upon every thing that can be properly called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyment, and all, as dead to me, and myself as dead to them. The second was, to live upon God that is invisible, as Paul said in another place; the way not to faint, is to “look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
—John Bunyan

Psalms 73:26 My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.