I sat a little over two years ago and wrote this...
In my 29 years of life, I've never lost something so dear to me as I did this past October. I'd never mourned the way I did for a complete 5 days... and going. The passing of my dear papa was unexpected. Even as we were all called and slowly made our way to the hospital we never thought Papa wasn't coming out of this one. He had been in far worse situations over the years. "Papa always recovers" is what we were all thinking. Monday night he breathed his last, we were and still are heartbroken. The past week gives a truer meaning to the quote "better to have loved and lost than never loved at all".
Today and over the past week, I continue to think about death. Asking questions like why does it hurt so much, why are we never ready for someone to leave, why are some taken so quickly and tragically, why do I think so often my life and my world are invincible. The questions could go on forever but something still remains... death.
It had been almost to the date 16 months since the death of my papa that some of our closest friends and someone that I had spent much of my grade school and teenage years with tragically died in a car crash. He was only 27 years old. So many more questions come, why would God take the life of someone whose life is just really getting started, why did this seem like a good time for his life to end, why, why, why. My papa was 76 his life was full. He had everything he ever desired and so much more but we still weren't ready to see him go and be taken from us without a moments notice. Talon was engaged, had been working in a job he loved for just a year, had just signed to build his first home. No one could have ever been ready for his life to end. I am also forced to remember funerals for babies and toddlers that I have sat through and more questions flood.
So I sit here and still think about death. I've been studying Genesis for the past month and the past few days I've been reminded of a few things concerning death.
Firstly, we were never made to experience separation, especially the separation death brings. When God originally made us death wasn't a thing. Death didn't come to be till after the fall of mankind. Sin entered the world and with it came pain and death and separation.
Secondly, death teaches us so much about our own physical and mental limitations. I am a mere mortal. Even though I too often believe I am invincible, death will find me and prove to me again that I am not God. I serve a God that knows times and seasons, a God that knows the number of hairs on my head and who has ordained the number of days I will live on the earth. Death sure has a way of humbling me. Though in my mind death doesn't make sense in the way that it creeps in so frequently and just takes what was once living God, knows and I can trust him. In my physical body, I am reminded that death can take me too and when it's not me my heartaches and it's heavy with pain from the loss of a friend.
Finally, I am reminded that this isn't forever! Because in the garden of Eden there also existed the tree of life! Through Jesus, we gain access to that tree. God sent his son to die for me. Jesus experienced the pain of separation from his Father on the cross. He knows the pain and grief that death brings and he wants to comfort us in our pain. He also wants us as believers to remember that this is not our home and the tears we cry now will be wiped away and eternity awaits us!
So even in the hardest of times, we can still say that God is God and he is good. We can also repent and say I am not God and sometimes what God says is good doesn't feel good. I too can fight to rest in the fact that death is one of those things that will never make sense in my mind because I wasn't made for death. So as I as continue to learn to mourn and feel all that God desires me to feel through death I have a hope, an everlasting hope. Through all of the pain, I can still say it is well with my soul because I have my gaze fixed on the life to come.
