Dying to Live, and Living to Die

I can’t quite put my finger on the exact moment this thought truly started to take up residence in my mind. It seems as though it’s an old familiar thought, which for the better part of the last decade has been dormant in my conscience. As a teenager, I could scarcely imagine life as an adult. It was nerve racking, mysterious, and truthfully, not the slightest bit attractive. Perhaps I’m in the minority of those adolescents who did not pine for freedom and independence; perhaps because I was in the minority of adolescents who recognized those terms only meant responsibility and accountability. There was a period of months as a seventeen year old, where I toiled with anxiety and depression over the impending death of my childhood. It was one of the darkest times of my life, and I despaired at the very thought of living.  Death, it seemed, was an ultimate escape from the toil and trouble of life. I wish it was as easy as saying I gained self-esteem, pulled myself up by my intellectual and emotional bootstraps, and found within myself a reason to live. I didn’t. I sought death; I fixated on what it would take to end my life. I fought for an end to the struggle in my heart and mind. Somehow, I failed, and in that failure, I found exactly what I was searching for. Hope.

He will swallow up death forever,
And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces;
The rebuke of his people He will take away from the earth;
For the Lord has spoken.
Isaiah 25:8

I was recently driving through a freezing rainstorm in the hills of Kentucky, headed up I-75 between Knoxville and Lexington. As rain fell to touch the freezing surfaces, I could see ice rapidly forming on my windshield. I grew up in Michigan, and learned to drive in extreme road conditions, but even a northern boy like me knows you don’t play around with freezing rain. More and more, I was picturing and imagining the scenarios that would lead to my death. Perhaps it would be a patch of black ice that would send me careening off a cliff. Maybe one of the hot rod truckers (who were apparently uninhibited by the conditions) would lose control and crush me in my little car (I knew I should have kept that truck). Most of all, I was begging, pleading, praying, “God, don’t let me die in Kentucky.”

 "It was as though God was writing my life in volumes, and He had thrown away the bookend I tried to impose upon His story."

In the reflection of that moment, I see that where, and when, and how I die have some meaning to me. Given the way I have lived the last few years, I suppose going out on the road would probably be the second most fitting way I could go behind being mauled by a bear or bitten by a venomous snake. I guess, what I’m getting at is that how, where, and when we die becomes a freeze frame of our life that stays attached to the memories of us for those we leave behind. I think back to the times of hopelessness I felt as a teenager, and the silent darkness I inhabited, and what a shame it would have been if the frame of my life had been frozen in that moment. How sad if my life were framed in what was a temporary season of selfishness and misguided despair. It was as though God was writing my life in volumes, and He had thrown away the bookend I tried to impose upon His story. The story was not done yet, and in that I found hope and pain. Now, as I approach the mystery and excitement of the next decade of my life, I wonder what is next in this story. Driving through mountains, and squaring off with bears, I wonder, “Is this the bookend, God?”

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4

Reading fiction is a challenge for me, because when the author does not write the story how I would have written it, I put it down. I take over the authors’ story, rewrite the authors’ characters, and impose my biases into the story. It is because of this same pride, I try to write my own story, and try to change those around me when they are not written the way I want them to be. So I don’t know if it is death that I fear, as much as it is that I will die having not been a willing participant in Gods’ story. As I drove a dark, icy mountain road, I wasn’t afraid that my life would end, I’ve felt as though everything since seventeen has been borrowed time anyway; I was afraid that I would die in my lie. In those moments it seemed most imminent, I loathed the clothes I was wearing, I hated the car I was driving, I was embarrassed by my attitude that week. I was incredibly aware of the motives of my life when facing death.  I was aware of how hard I had worked to drive a nice car. I was aware of how much thought I had put into the appearance of the clothes I was wearing. I was aware of the thoughts of disdain I had for people around me, and of my own selfishness in my interactions with them. I was afraid that more of my life had been devoted to trying to write the story myself than in letting the author and finisher write it for me.

Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him.
For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that he lives, he lives to God.
Romans 6:3-10

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
“For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
“For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His father with his angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.”
“Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”
Matthew 16:24-28

What I am learning to see, and more importantly to act upon, is that there is meaning in both life, and in death. As a teenager, I learned not to seek death, and as a twenty something, I have learned not to seek life, but to echo what Paul wrote to the Philippians, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). What I still need to learn is that living in Christ is not the same as living for me. Christ made no simple demand when he said to deny self. It is to my shame that I live with the memory of selfishly seeking to end my own life, and I confess it so that Christ might use it for His glory. There is a long way to go, and many things to unlearn that have been picked up along the way. I feel the weight of a culture that has despiritualized the human experience, and told me that I can find answers within myself. Self-esteem, self-reliance, self-actualization, self-centeredness, self-glorification, and a myriad of other “self-“ terms are thrown around haphazardly, as we each try to write our own story, and seeking all sorts of “self-help” gurus for counsel when we can’t reconcile the fact that we never fully have control of our own plot. Each of our stories started without our consent, it is continued outside of our supreme control, and it will end in spite of us as well. We fight each other, scheme, and step on each other in an attempt to gain more and more control of our lives, and every second we spend living for ourselves we create what could be the final frame of our lives. I don’t want the final frame of my life to be highlighted by the clothes I wear, the car I drive, the place I live, or the relationships I have. I want my final frame to glorify the one in whom I have found a reason to live, the one in whom I find refuge and hope. I want my final frame to glorify my author, my creator, my God.

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory?   O death, where is your sting?”The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
1 Corinthians 15:50-58