There's only one week until I turn 23 and it may not seem that old but to me... well it just does.
And at night when I go home and lay on the couch and read about a 23 year old half way across the world
I can’t believe that it has been over a month now since I patted my sweet friend’s head as I said goodnight to her small frame on my couch. I can’t believe it has been over a month since I sat behind her in the hospital bed holding her body in the only position that was comfortable in those final hours.
And truth be told, in the late night hours alone with the Father on the cold, hard floor of my bathroom, I have beat my fists against the smooth tile and against my strong Father’s chest and I have sobbed it until the words won’t come, “I can’t believe she’s dead.”
We fought so hard.
It’s not an easy thing, you know, to wake up from 100,740 hours of sleep to be greeted by your own 23rd year of life.
What exactly do you do with a soul, a body, that’s 23 years
old?
It is her little boy’s sixth birthday. We had talked for weeks about the party we would have, with a cake, but that was when they still lived here, when his mother still lived. Instead, I drive across the bridge to where he is now being raised by his aunt and a kind neighbor. We bring the cake. We sing Happy Birthday and he is ok and the kids have fun and are happy. And as we drive away and all smile and wave, I cry.
I didn’t want the story to end this way.
Are there things that soul should have seen, should have
accomplished, should be accomplishing?
When you look at goose bump covered, cold legs and realize they've walked a third of their projected life and you wonder what exactly they've done.
When you look at goose bump covered, cold legs and realize they've walked a third of their projected life and you wonder what exactly they've done.
I wrote the ending in my head and it was the ending where my friend gets better, becomes strong and healthy, and is able to move out with her children. It was the ending where they get to sign their names on the bottom of our table to be remembered as friends who lived here and fellowshipped with us and we would all cry happy tears as we served them their last meal before they headed out to their new life healthy and whole. In the ending I wrote, I didn’t have to look 4 children under the age of ten in the eyes and tell them that their mother died in the night as I bounce their baby sister on my knee to keep her quiet. In my ending I didn’t spend every hour of 5 consecutive days fighting and fighting and fighting for a mother to get well and end up clinging to my best friend as we lower a body into a casket.
But His voice comes strong, steady, clear, “Child, this is not the end.”
And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed and they were seeking to bring him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when He saw their faith He said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”
What do you do when eternity wakes you up and reminds you of
your own mortality?
What do you do with a flesh and blood heart that’s been stuffed with the intangible, cosmic eternity?
Could even one-hundred twenty three years of beating contain something so massive?
And I crack an egg into a cast Iron skillet.
An egg.
That’s exciting.
8,395 mornings, and all I'm doing is opening an egg into a pool of butter.
And I tell Jesus- “More
than anything, this year, I want radical.”
I think about the book I can't get through, at this point can't even start, because every time I start there's something so discontented in me I can't sit still for long or go to sleep easily or see my corner of the world properly.
She's 23 too. And something about that just drives my craving for radical even more.
Every time I read another blog entry I want to sell it all and go, just go. I want to make it count. Not one more birthday spent reaching for radical.Instead I pull black/brown mascara across my top lashes.
“What does radical look like here? What does radical look like in a stable job with benefits and a brick house and pounding pavement in hot pink runners for fun and leftovers after ever dinner?”
Here’s the thing about radical though;
Radical is about Anna-eyes. Eyes that see Jesus like the woman who saw him, a boy-sized body, in the temple when others rushed passed- rushed past the Lamb from God to bring sacrifices for God.
Didn't Nazarene, carpenter Jesus show us radical isn't about
where we live, radical is about how we love.
Radical is the fact that relationships are reality and the
reality of that is that there are no interruptions in a day there are only
people Christ lives in or died for.
Radical isn't about abandoning our North-American-modern-marvel-burdened-life for the good ole' days or the simpler life, for thick Amazons or dry deserts or thatch roofs or dirt floors. Radical is abandoning self.
The only way to eradicate self love is to contemplate the love of Christ and then comes the acting like Christ. Because all radical Christianity is first rooted in relationship Christianity — with Christ and His children.Right where we are.
Radical is done with loving Jesus without obeying Jesus.
Because wasn't the difference between the sheep and goats what they did and didn't do?
And what is the will of the Father for us, the fearless flock, to do? It's love, to love our neighbor and our God. Not just affection love, action love.
Radical is loving the people who make us bleed- really, truly, fearlessly loving them because we don’t have anything to loose. Because his love is in us and for us, his life blood going through us so not even the most dreaded, painful, deepest wound can bleed us dry.
This is how we do the radical Christianity by looking at the wounding and warring and winning of Christ.
First, He forgave their sins. First, He secured the eternal. Because really, what is a few more years of walking in comparison to an eternity of worship and sins all forgiven?
Death is not the end. Then end was when He hung on a cross and rose from a tomb and I asked for life, and Life is what He gave. Better, glorious, eternal Life. In those final hours, I held my friend’s head, and I watched her chest heave as her soul first laid eyes on His face and I could nearly feel His breath on mine. And no, I do not know His ways, but I know Him. I know Him. And I do not just lay my friends before Jesus for physical healing but that they might know Him too, that they might be saved. And Katherine, she knows Him.
We fought so hard. And still we won. He won.
Radical here isn't about proving our worthiness but being transparent about or weaknesses.
Because radical isn't always about going across the world, but about us going to our knees.
Radical isn't about leaving a mark, it’s about living lives marked by the fact that this isn't all there is; the material, the tangible, our health, our happiness, our goals, our immediate good, our comfort. There's this inheritance that's being kept in heaven by God himself for me. For you.
This week I take a two-month-old baby to the doctor to confirm that he has a terminal skin condition that causes burn-like blisters to cover his entire body and will ultimately lead to his death. There is no treatment. I wrap and dress the wounds because I know how. Because keeping them clean will prevent infection and anemia from blood loss and prolong his life. But I recognize that prolonging his life will ultimately prolong his suffering.
I take a grandfather from our community in for a check-up. Cancer. It is everywhere. They give him a few months, weeks maybe. We try to make him comfortable, and keep him company. We tell stories of a Father who would send a Son, the only sacrifice that could absolve all this sin, the only blood that could wash us snow white. But part of me still wants to fight. Still wants to research, still wants to explore other options, still will not believe that this is it.
Radical is more than doing, it's becoming.Radical is me the rebel, unable, unwilling to keep the law now the righteous. Mary, the righteous.
Radical isn't us out to save the whole world because what flesh and blood human could do that? No, radical isn't about saving anything, radical is about spending our lives like the broken who were bought by God with no fear of his Kingdom defaulting or his economy of grace going into recession.Radical isn't about living in poverty, radical is living in any circumstance like our treasure is in heaven; untouchable, unshakable, unbankruptable.
There is something so sacred about the fight for life. I believe that God wants us to fight. There is a focus that comes from being so close to death, a clarity, a purpose. My heart that still fought for Katherine and believed for her healing even when my mind knew there were no more options cries out that this can’t be it, this cannot be the end, there must be something else.
This is the audacity of hope.
We fight and we wait and a watching world says, “Why hope for life in a world of death?” And we know the answer. My heart is right. This isn’t it, this is not the end, and there is something else. His life is better.
Our fight is not for this life, our fight is for eternity.
And my skewed, off kilter view of radical is almost always equated with suffering but Oswald Chambers he reminds me
"To choose to suffer means there is something wrong, to choose God's will and suffer is a different thing."
Radical isn't about suffering, radical is about seeking. So instead of being Marthas busily slaving, serving a feast to the bread of life could we be Marys who seek out God? Could you and I be the ones who don't just settle in suffering for the gospel but are gripped by the power of the gospel. Suffering will come, people will die and abandon and reject. But we don't seek those things, we seek Christ.
And when we're gripped, when we are bursting with the thought that I have hope in God. When we are gripped tight by the gospel, then could we preach the gospel and use our words and our hands and our heart because they are all necessary.
We wanted to let you know that our friend went to be with her Maker. We wanted to thank you for praying. And we wanted to encourage you that the fight on this side of heaven is not over yet. But we look at the pain and the suffering all around us and strange as it is, our hope only grows. We know Him and so we lift our heads to the Life-Giver and say, “We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and our hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”
Here’s to hope, friends, a hope that does not disappoint. Keep fighting for the Gospel, keep fighting for Life, because He has already won.
Radical becomes fearless and tangible when this is its anthem- “Nothing is wasted because God’s glory is always being worshiped.”
