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Death. A wee bit of an unpopular topic around the holidays. But it's a part of my daily world, so let's talk about it. The moment life ceases. The instant when who you ARE becomes who you WERE.
A few days ago, I had lunch with some people that I had never met before, and like anyone else that doesn't know me well, they had a bunch of questions about what I do as an AIDS hospice nurse.
"How can you handle that? How can you watch people die everyday? Don't you get depressed? I could never do that. What do you say? How do the people who are dying handle it?"
It's a bit hard to sum up your whole life's work and passion in one sentence, so I spent the next ten minutes fumbling around for words that could possibly serve to explain to these strangers who I am and what I do. And then I just told them the truth the best way I knew how.
My story starts a few years ago, when my little world was shaken, and as I looked around to see what remained, I realized that this life can't be all there is.
I worked in cancer care, and I watched as my patients died, overtaken by their illnesses. It seemed to me that cancer caused needless, senseless, and seemingly cruel and tragic deaths. Seven years in that that job, with those patients and that disease, caused me to come face to face with the stone-cold-hard fact of life:
We are all dying from the first breath we take.
Humanity is a terminal disease, with a 100% kill rate. It's genetic. And it's coming for all of us. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. Maybe next week, or in 70 years, but it's coming. Your heart might stop beating in your sleep. You could be hit in a car accident. Or maybe one of those complex factories you have in one cell of your body decides to quit working properly and it all goes south from there. AIDS or not, none of us are immune.
And that HURTS. Like, really, really hurts. It hurts deep in the core of your soul, because at the rock bottom of who you are, you know that death is WRONG. It's unjust and it doesn't make any sense. It goes against the grain of the very fabric of your being. All that we are: all the beauty, the uniqueness and the creativity... it shouldn't just come to a halting, abrupt, and painful end. Death is a total crock, and I know you know what I mean.
I spent 7 years of my life watching people fight cancer. People who were moms to young children, husbands to wives, children to parents, brothers, friends, lovers, and sisters to somebody, and in ALL that time the harsh reality of their pain and suffering never REALLY hit me. I was content to provide the medical intervention that we could, and to be the best I could be at my job, hoping that somehow that would be enough to make a difference for them. And then one day, very unexpectedly, the heartbreak of their loss finally caught up to me.
Devastated by the recent loss of one of my patients, I watched her teenage son grieve her absence, and my heart was once-and-for-all wrecked with the unfairness of it all. She was someone's Mom. Someone's world. Someone's everything. While sobbing into my arms at the breakroom table, through my tears and my anger, I issued a challenge to anyone listening, "This can't be all there is. Life cannot be this short and this filled with pain. This can't be all there is. This can't be all there is. There must be something else. There must be something else. There has to be something else. Some other truth to counter this. There must be something else."
Devastated by the recent loss of one of my patients, I watched her teenage son grieve her absence, and my heart was once-and-for-all wrecked with the unfairness of it all. She was someone's Mom. Someone's world. Someone's everything. While sobbing into my arms at the breakroom table, through my tears and my anger, I issued a challenge to anyone listening, "This can't be all there is. Life cannot be this short and this filled with pain. This can't be all there is. This can't be all there is. There must be something else. There must be something else. There has to be something else. Some other truth to counter this. There must be something else."
I had finally come to the end of all my own answers, and I was forced to listen...
There is something else.
This world is not all you were made for.
This life isn't all there is.
You don't just cease to exist when you die.
You were made for a purpose.
You were made for Me.
I don't believe that we were lovingly crafted and created by an all powerful God just to turn to dust. If all of this amounts to nothing, then God must be nothing short of cruel, hateful and spiteful. I've seen the facts on the faces of the dying, and their faces tell me that if this life is all there is, then there is NO REASON for you or I to ever get out of bed again in the morning. It just doesn't make sense to me that God would create something as amazing as humanity and then after only a few short years, then steal our very life and breath and being and existence away from us, in some sort of sick cosmic joke. What kind of head-case of an artist destroys their masterpiece after only a brief display of glory?
When you have finished your search of all the -isms, -ists, and -ologies to answer that question and many others, I pray to God that you waste no time in coming to the same conclusion that I did:
If Jesus isn't the answer, then there is no answer.
The lunch-time-getting-to-know-Amy interviewing session ended with the above conclusion, mostly because I got flustered, and tired of talking about myself, and tired of talking about death, but if I had been eloquent for a few minutes longer I would have said this to my new friends:
Just because I'm an AIDS nurse, doesn't make me special or different. I wasn't "specially" gifted to "handle" death, because the truth is that all of us will have to handle death sooner or later.
But for Christians, we do handle it, because we know that God keeps his promises. I don't get depressed, because I can see the greater JOY that awaits those who die knowing Christ. I can watch people die because I recognize who it is that God made them to be and that THAT is not about to end at all, and that they are about to BE with Him forever, and that this is the last of the steps of a journey towards home. I can love what I do, when I get to tell someone that if they had beauty in this life, that it will be magnified in eternity, and that if they had pain in this life, that all sad things come untrue in the presence of the one who invented Truth.
When it comes to my own death, I will lean hard into the things that I am promised. That NOTHING separates us from the love of God and that even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear nothing because HE IS WITH ME. I know that on my deathbed, there will be no sting for my family members in losing me. That there will be no fear of the darkness. That there will only be goodness and mercy all the days of my life, and that I will be headed to a wedding...
No matter what you believe, you CANNOT deny that we all are in the valley of the shadow of death. It's all around us. Just watch any creepy movie if you need reminding. Death is coming. Your life will be over one of these days. Thankfully, through Christ, we have the power to decide how we will walk into death valley and what will happen when we do.
I'm praying with all that I have, that you don't choose to face the end of your life alone, but that you face it with a Shepherd at your side, head-on, ready for it's arrival and welcoming all that comes after. I can promise you it'll be the best days of your life.
