I'm gonna die.

...Is that morbid? Perhaps.
What's even more morbid is a Google Image search for "death". Don't try that one if you're home alone.

You see, I was looking for a picture that I feel resonates with how I view death, a topic that seems to settle on my mind quite often. The morbid, grotesque, and caricatured anime renderings of death don't sit well with me. I view it more like...sunset on an autumn day.

In autumn, darkness blankets the sky at a noticeably earlier time of day; most plant life has reached its prime, is bearing or has born its fruit, and is now beginning its steady descent into the barren winter months; shadows slip out of hiding and join together in a haunting dance, happy to be rid of the sun's all-revealing light; details that were once razor sharp become eclipsed, made dull by twilight's softer glow; vivid oranges, yellows, and reds burst forward, a desperate swan song before being enveloped by the cimmerian darkness...it all points towards the nearing, inevitable end of the day.

Death, the end, is something that my generation doesn't think of enough. Well, allow me to re-phrase...we think about it plenty, but we don't think about it happening to us. We are inundated with death from sensationalist media, from film and entertainment, and from music (Neyo advises: "...for all we know, we might not get tomorrow / let's do it tonight..."), and from games. We are told stories about mass killings, terrorist bombings, black-hearted murders, and medical failures. We have laws against drunk driving, texting and driving, driving without our seat-belts, and a multitude of other distractions while driving. Why? Because we could die. Any one of those reports, stories, or broken laws could be us. But when we say "us", we have managed to somehow dissociate our individual selves from that pronoun, and in doing so we dissociate from the subject the pronoun was being linked to: death. "That news report could have been me, but it wasn't," our subconscious speculates, "and since none of those reports have ever been me, they probably never will be." Subconsciously, we falsely affirm our own immortality. So now when we say "us", we really mean "everyone else". Death affects people, but not me. It may come to a family member, but not to me. It might happen to a friend from high school, but not to me.

Furthermore, we have developed the ability to suppress our subconscious musings, never allowing them to bubble up to the surface, never thinking them on a conscious level. If someone asked me, "Nathaniel, have you ever thought that others may die, but you never will?", up until the last few years I could honestly answer, "No, I have not". I had never thought that phrase to myself. At least, I hadn't until people that I knew started brushing against death, while others fully embraced it. A handful of examples from my life:

• An acquaintance from high school, Richie Herskowitz, died from Cystic Fibrosis before he could celebrate his 18th birthday. He was the youngest ever recipient of a double lung transplant when he was only 6 years old. 

• My grandfather almost died last year at age 75 when his gall bladder died and festered, without his knowledge, not long after a triple bypass surgery. The infection threatened his liver, stomach, and kidneys, but the doctors caught it before it caught him.

• Another acquaintance, that I met and spent time with on my summertime visits to California during high school, got involved with people that he should not have and was recently (within the last few months) shot and killed execution style in a field. If he had not taken the bullet himself, harm would have come to his grandmother, wife, and baby daughter.

• One of my favorite pastors, Bob Jennings, a man that I regard very highly, died this last November from pancreatic cancer. Reading his journal from the time he was diagnosed until he was on his death bed really affected me. There was a weightiness to his words, a vivid understanding of his own mortality, that shook me to the very core of my being.

In a moment of revelation, after pondering the death that had touched my life, it hit me like the proverbial sack of life-snuffing bricks: I'm gonna die. Not now, perhaps, and not even in a week or a year; but soon, very soon, I'm gonna die. "I am about to go the way of all the earth..." (1 Kings 2:2). All the earth is headed that direction, without exception, without partiality. We all die. Even you, friend, and even me.

In light of that reality, what matters should we be concerning ourselves with? Is all existence temporal and finite? Are all things truly vanity? Or is there something beyond the grave, that transcends death itself? If there is, that is what I want to concern myself with.

That something, I believe, is Christ Jesus and his kingdom. When my name is forgotten from history, when every last person I knew and who knew me has likewise died, and any memory of my existence has faded from the earth, Jesus, who brought all things into being for his pleasure and glory, remains. How many billions of people have walked this earth, breathed the same air, drank the same water, and then passed into obscurity? But Jesus was before time, is present in time, and will be forevermore. He holds all things together by the word of his power, and before he brought me into being, Jesus was there. When I fade, Jesus endures.

If Jesus is what matters, and he, his kingdom, and his people are the only things that last beyond the grave, then why not labor for the death-defying matters of a Christ-centered eternity?

I fear I will reach the autumn twilight of my life without ever having flourished, without ever having done anything that was lasting, and with the shadows skipping and leaping around me, that I will slip into the darkness of night. I fear my leaves will fall from barren, fruitless limbs. I fear that no harvest will have ever been reaped from my life.

I don't fear being forgotten; I fear not being worth remembering.

I look forward to being with my Savior, and I know that for me, when I fall asleep on this earth, I will wake up in Christ. But I pray that, in the meantime, my existence will not be a waste of time, a waste of space, or a waste of life. I pray that when I reach my autumn twilight I will happily embrace the falling darkness, knowing that the sun has set on a life well-lived, and that the next light I see will be his presence on eternity's horizon.

5 years.

Some of you may know (or vaguely recall) how I asked Kayla out. It was an exceedingly awkward moment in time.

The characters:

1. a pale-skinned male with perpetually flushed cheeks who (mistakenly) thought he was awesome and (correctly) thought he was about to score a total dish [a girl who has it all: looks, wit, intelligence, personality] who was obviously head-over-heels with him; his entire wardrobe consisted of 51 50 hats, muscle tees to show off his scrawny arms, chunky skater Reeboks, and poorly-patterned zip up hoodies; at the time, he thought he and character 2 were playing in the same league, but he would soon realize it was not so
2. a deliciously sun-kissed, lightly-freckled, brown-eyed angel of girl whose laugh could bring light to dark rooms and whose smile could make you forget Newton's very well established law of gravity; her eyes could instill courage enough to face an army of dragons, and her words were more soothing than any ointment or salve; her clothing all was carefully calculated, always tasteful, appropriate to the occasion, and never out of style; she was the closest thing to heaven that character 1 would ever encounter in this mortal life

The date: July 27th, 2008.
The time: somewhere around 2 AM.
The location: a park by her best friends house, lying on the grass, hoping the sprinklers wouldn't turn on before I had asked her the fateful question that would change the course of my life...forever.

But before I could get the question out, I, rather unfortunately, vocalized my awkwardness leading up to that point, and it looked something like this:

Character 1: So, uuuuhh...I've kinda been wanting to ask you if, uuuh...you would want to be my girlfriend.
Character 2: ...okay.
Character 1: ...yeah...haha [see? awkward.]
Character 2: Well then, ask me.
Character 1: ...alright, then. Kayla, will you be my girlfriend?

I don't remember what words were exchanged after that point; all I know is that I am now married to her, so she must not have said "no".

Today commemorates 5 years since I asked her if she would go steady with me, and I write to  you now as a happily married, faithfully besotted husband and father-to-be. I can only thank God for allowing me the chance to spend any amount of time with this woman. She has such a deep love for people, for God in and through our Lord Jesus, for virtue and beauty, for family...she contains in her soul wisdom that she should not possess at only 22 years old. It is a joy and a pleasure to talk with her, to walk with her, and to live life with her. God in heaven has held her as a torch and set fire to my soul. And for that I am eternally grateful.

What have I learned? I've learned that I don't know too much. Not about life, about her, about myself, about God, about family, about...anything, really. Through her God has shown me dark, vile places in my heart that would have spread like a cancer to the rest of my being had she not labored alongside me to dig out the bad roots and plant good seed in their place. I've been humbled, very humbled. She knows so much about me, and she remembers so much about me to the very minutest detail, important or otherwise, but I have a hard time remembering what she told me just 5 minutes ago. It's difficult for me to think much of myself when standing next to someone who is so good at loving me as she loves herself. She has taught me so much, and I dare say that I would do better to model her life than most anybody else's.

It's my prayer that, should you desire someone to spend your life with, that you would find someone like Kayla. Someone that you can respect and look to as an example for your life, someone that challenges you to be a better you, someone that helps you realize and push forward to apprehend the purpose of your existence - to know and be known by God.

Darling, if you read this, I want you to know how special you are to me. Thank you for 5 years of loving, of learning, of failing, of growing; thank you for letting me be your nerd-bomber. I wouldn't want to be awkward with anyone else. And thank you for gently showing me that you, my bride, are way out of my league.







P.S.: My wife has some thoughts about today, too. Go check them out here.

why blog?

Good question.

I've tried journaling on more than a few occasions through my life and it just never seemed to stick.
Don't get me wrong, I love the smell of leather-bound, gold-edged pages just as much as the next bibliophilic journaling wannabe (and I have the collection to prove it!). I love separating the pages, feeling the ink slip out of my pen and onto the paper, leafing through to the next wide-ruled set of lines. Of the 15-20 or so journals I've bought since my teen years (I'm now 23), most of them contain a few pages of the familiar "Dear Journal" rhetoric, and then somewhere around 100 blank pages following. The exceptions to the usual "blank pages following" trend were those rushed moments that I needed to write down the confirmation number of the new journal I just ordered and couldn't find notebook paper, but my previous journal was handy and, wouldn't you know it, there was plenty of blank space for writing information down!

For some reason, I never became a regimented writer; just a collector of barely-used journals. Come to think of it,

I've never really been a regimented anything.

 

It's not like I don't have thoughts. I have plenty! Some of them are funny, some off color, some deep, some shallow, some small, some big. They come in different shapes and sizes, they strike different chords with different people, and they even effect me, the thinker, in different ways. And you know what they have the tendency to do once I've thought them? Disappear. Like a drop of Red #40 in a 50 gallon drum of Hawaiian Punch, my thought is lost among the high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and other natural flavors of life. I don't suspect that all of my thoughts should be saved, but the ones that have worth - that have the flavor of wisdom, that are fizzy with timelessness, or have an aftertaste of glory - I don't want to let those ones escape. It is those drops, those thoughts, that I hope to catch in mid-fall and preserve for future generations.

 

What would the thoughts of the great thinkers of yesteryear be to us if they had never been written down? What if they had not taken the time to spill ink after plumbing the depths of a great conundrum? What if the most profound questions, answers, and statements had never been accounted for? Perhaps those same thoughts would have been formulated by someone else. Of that possibility we can only guess. But what I do know is that I'm glad to have, written in journals and books, the great thoughts of great men and great women who dedicated themselves to leaving no great thought un-recorded.

I don't think my thoughts or my life could be considered "great"; but if they reveal a truth about God, about reality, about life or living, then they are great because of the object of my thought, not by virtue of my ability to think. There have been thoughts that I've thought in times past which excited me, awed me, humbled me, and moved me, and I wish that I could now remember them. I hope to never feel that twinge of regret, that "O, how I wish I could remember" feeling, again.

 

Therefore, I now blog (who knows for how long?). Enjoy my thoughts if you take interest in them. I will warn you ahead of time: I am very regular, boringly normal, monotonously...monotonous. But I promise to be real.

 

Why blog? Because on the off-chance that I say something profound, something worthy of remembrance, then it will remain, long after I have passed, to encourage and inspire a future generation.