death by living

I.    I had a dream about dying, once. It was nonsensical and as odd as dreams come, but what felt like hard reality was this: driving with two people I loved in the front seats and knowing in the pit of my stomach that I was on my way to die. Everything I saw was vivid and colorful through my glittering vision. My eyes now felt the weight and sacredness of all I saw. A feeling I can’t even begin to describe leapt in my heart in this dream world, something that felt as real as watching a golden lit sunset that sticks in your mind and memory for years to come. This dream and that feeling are like that. They’re glued in my heart.

II.    One of my friends died when we were both eleven. My papa died of cancer when I was four. Some friends of our friends died in a house fire. One of my dear elderly friends died just last year. Surrounded by death, my heart felt cramped and terrified and I often couldn’t sleep at night. Sure, I was a Christian and certainly wasn’t going to hell, but was heaven as good as all of this? I wept into my sheets and shook my tightly closed fists at God. You can’t take this life from me, I said over and over.

And I’m not exactly sure how it happened—if it happened gradually or all at once—but my fingers got pried open and I learned to breath. And trust God with this whole life thing. I haven’t yet been able to shake this sharp awareness of death from my body and soul but I’m not scared of death anymore. I’m willing to part with this life, for he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

III.   I have so much to say and do and be and so little time to do it in. But God has given me all the time I need to do everything I was destined to do. Maybe this is all too personal and uncomfortable to read and to put way out there in cyber space. Maybe I was dead wrong to post this scrap of honesty. But the thing is, we all need a wake up call. A mighty trumpet to blast in our hearts that WE ARE ACTUALLY GOING TO DIE SOMEDAY and we can’t go on living like we’re going to be here forever. We don’t have a lot of time. So the question of the day is this: How are we going to use our precious time here on planet Earth? Hoarding it for ourselves? Grabbing grabbing grabbing and never letting go? Or seeing how much we can give away while our hearts are pumping? Laughing as hard as we can and gripping the Gospel in our fists and loving God and loving people with all our hearts?

You get to decide how you use your time. The spotlight’s on you.