This Mortal Life

Lately it seems death is all around... I suppose it's always been.  Maybe now it's just that it's getting closer.  I can feel the darkness bearing down on me and those I love.

Eternity has always been a difficult concept for me.  The idea of it sends me into a spiraling anxiety attack. Consequently, death is something that I have always pushed into the far recesses of my mind where I can bury it beneath everyday normal activities.  Safely tucked away where it can't hurt me. This only works during the day when I can keep my mind busy with the tyranny of the urgent.  At night, when all is quiet except my mind, it haunts me.

What if everything I believe about life and death and time is wrong?  What if death really is the end?  And even if everything I've built my faith upon is indeed true, then how exactly do I wrap my spirit around an unending story?

As death has crept into my circle I've realized that even when I question my convictions, I inevitably return to them and cling to them for strength, comfort and meaning. 

Teresa's mommy saying goodbye

Michelle and Chris Gennaro

In the past few months I have lost loved ones and watched loved ones who have lost.  I've seen a man in his late 90's pass peacefully into the next forever in the midst of a family who loves him and is proud to call him "D-D-Daddy".  I've convened with the hearts of past classmates pleading for the life of a true man of God and sat with silent tears as the news came that he was gone.  I've witnessed his wife, in the center of her pain, cling to the promises of God with a hope that transcends anything I know.  I've entered into the story of a little 6 year old girl... Teresa... an orphan from China... with no hope at all... live a new life, a full life with a forever family.  I followed intensely the process from her first call that there was a new heart available to her to her final moments in her parents arms.  I have fallen head first into the story of our son, Benjamin's, orphanage "sister"... Meisyn, a sweet seven year old dreamer who has compiled her "sand bucket list" of things she wants to do before her soul leaves this earth.  I have held my sweet friend, Heather, up to the skies as she learns to say goodbye to her son, Tyler... a boy who will never grow up.  And I have cried tears of empathy and fear for my own heart-sick son as I read the story from Mary Beth Chapman on the loss of her daughter, Maria.

Me with Heather and her sons, Tyler (left) and Ryan (right) not long after Tyler's diagnosis

Benjamin (center) and Meisyn (in pink) at their orphanage

This is all so broken.  This is not the way it should be.  My spirit cries out for those gone and those left behind.

There is one common thread that weaves itself through these moments of grief and it is Jesus Christ.  In each circumstance, ultimately the glory was His.  He made himself known in the deepest, darkest places.  There were glimmers of hope and glimpses of peace.  Even at the heart of my doubt, I clutch at these moments, grasping for an understanding that will probably never be fully realized here on this earth.  Many lives have been moved to deeper faith, courageous choices and a more realized recognition of redemption.  They are beacons to me.  They are pointing the way... to a place of which I am admittedly frightened but a place where we shall see Him as He is.