It's hard to believe it is almost Easter! Easter is always a time of year that always makes me reflect on the resurrection of our Savior, as well as His life and death. These past couple months have been a sober reminder to me of how fragile life is At the same time, I have felt such a powerful sense of what a joy and blessing life can be. It truly is a mystery...
One of the things I love most about being the oldest in a family of nine is getting to watch all of the different stages of life take place before my eyes. I get to watch Owen's eyes light up as he tastes his first bites of real food. I get to watch my three year old brothers read their preschool books to me with pride as they learn the alphabet and begin to understand how the letters fit together to make words. I see my four year old brother pull out his first toot. I celebrate with my eighteen year old brother as he enters college and passes his honors classes with flying colors! The problems that we all face look very different, but we are always here to support each other through the ups and downs life brings us.
Several weeks ago I got to go to an inpatient hospice center for my first clinical rotation. I felt a mixture of anxiety and curious anticipation as I walked into the beautiful building. It certainly didn't seem like a place that held dying people. Yet the very first patient I saw was an older man gasping for every breath he took. The effort of whispering a few broken words utterly exhausted him. In the room across from him lay a woman who was completely unresponsive to our questions. The nurse and I gently slid her up in bed to a more comfortable position and did everything we could to alleviate her pain. Later that morning, as we went in to give her some morphine, I watched her die. It was the first time I had ever seen death. It didn't feel the way I thought it would. There wasn't a sense of darkness or fear. There was just...emptiness. The woman took her last breath and was gone. Her body was there, but she was not. I listened to her heart and her lungs, which had been struggling so fiercely to take any breath only hours before, but there was only silence.
Just two days before my sobering day at hospice, I got to see the mystery of life in a new way when I was in an incredibly serious car accident. As I was turning at a green light, a car smashed the front of my car and completely totaled it. After the crash, I remember sitting in the smoking car, shaking and wondering how I was still alive. I couldn't stop trembling as the police questioned me about the accident. Dad picked me up and brought me home. All I could do was cling to little Owen and cry. An enormous sense of fear and fragility had swept over me. I realized that I could have been so easily killed in a moment that morning. How could I possibly have taken for granted waking up and walking out of the house, getting into the car, and heading to class?
Every morning I love watching the sun rise as I go on my daily run. The beauty never ceases to fill me with amazement. No matter what is going on in our world, the sun never fails to brighten the day with warmth and color. One of my favorite Bible verses is Lamentations 3:22-23: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." It doesn't matter how fragile our lives are; God is faithful and has promised to bring us the grace we need to face each and every day.
Looking at life in this way shouldn't fill us with sadness or despair. Instead, we should allow it to show us what is truly important. We should live our lives in a way that reflects the joy and hope we have in Christ, Who is the author of our lives. God knows what will happen today, tomorrow, and every day until we die. Matthew 6:25 says, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?" Life is so much more than these things! Being surrounded by younger siblings makes me long to face the world the way a child does: with a pure, simple hope and joy in the little things. The twins look upon each day with so much enthusiasm. They thoroughly engage in their little joys and face their problems as they come. They don't fret or live in fear! When something bad happens, they know they will get through it together.
2 Corinthians 5:14-15 says, "For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." Let this love work in our hearts this Easter as we marvel over the life, death, and resurrection of our precious Savior!! Life can be a mystery, but it is truly something to be celebrated.
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