In my life lately there have been a lot of endings. The time change is around the corner, days get dark so early already, the leaves are starting to pile up, right along side last years leaves that are still waiting to be raked. The days without a jacket and slip on sandals are done and I am digging through the cedar chest to find sweaters that I still like. I don't really know why I put stuff in there. The next year I am always thinking....what on earth was I thinking...
Today I took a little reflection time. It is a particularly hectic week and I have lots of deadlines and activities this week. It is always at this point I put my head down and try to move through as much as I can as quickly as I can. While this sounds good, I find I get very crispy somewhere along the way and those who know me best run for cover. So, I thought I would do us all a favor and rest up a little today to re-center myself. By the way, when one wishes to re-center one's self I highly recommend mindless television. It requires absolutely nothing, can be slept through with ease and in the end you just end up feeling like you are at least superior to what you just watched.
But I digress. My thoughts today are filled with death. Sounds joyful, doesn't it? I am not pondering my own, I am thinking a bit about those who I love who have died. Those who I do not know but have come to know through others who have died and even a little about what my feelings about death ought to be. It's a natural part of life, it is one of the two things I am told are absolutes: death and taxes. Who wants to ponder taxes?! I understand grief, we invest a great deal into the lives of the people we love. They not only live as themselves, they live with part of us in their make up. We live with part of them in ours. When they are gone, there is no recovering that part, it is gone too. You can't loose a portion of yourself without pain. I have had doctors tell me after surgery to remove a body part or two that I would have discomfort, but I can assure you that was pain.
Yet, if death is a given and we believe that to be absent from the body is to be present with God, why is death such a gloomy, bleak, depressing topic? Why has dying become almost shameful? Why, when we record the death of someone from cancer, do we also list how long they bravely battled the disease? Why does it make us so angry? Do we believe that death is punitive? A failure? A result of a heartless God who just couldn't be bothered to intervene? Do we believe that God is able to provide for us, even when our pain is great and our future expectations have just vanished? If not, then we are grieving much more than loss, we are grieving the smallness of our God.
Just to make you dizzy, let me counter all that with this: if death is inevitable and a natural part of life, why did God give us such a strong desire to live? In my father's last days, I remember the exchange between him and the hospice nurse. His sweatshirt was interfering with the IV line and she reached into a pocket, pulled out some scissors and tried to cut the cuff. He grabbed the scissors and said, you can't cut this, it's a good sweatshirt. I saw the light go off in his eyes when he realized that it didn't matter anymore about saving his clothing. It was a sad moment but it crystallized for me how very much my father wished to live. Why does everything in us cry out to live if we are supposed to realize that death is simply the doorway to eternity? It puzzles me greatly.
I didn't find any solutions today, but I found great peace in airing it all in God's presence. At times when it is all much too much for me, I have learned that peace comes not from answers as I have always thought, but from being allowed to say it all. God is so much bigger than I am, deeper than I am, wiser than I will ever be, dropping all my questions into His hands is enough. It's the release and the joy in giving it to Someone much more competent than I am, that gives me peace. Often I find, in the course of living, I come across answers to questions I dropped off years ago. Many I am still waiting for. Some answers come I wasn't even wise enough to ask. I think it doesn't matter nearly as much as the practice of being present.
Let's hope it was enough to keep me from getting too crispy and perhaps burning those around me. This season is passing, another one is coming, and in all we give thanks.
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