A church message recently included an excerpt from Mike Yaconelli’s book Dangerous Wonder. The excerpt is this:

“I think that the life cycle is backward. You should die first, get that out of the way. Then you live twenty years in an old-age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young. You get a gold watch, you go work. You work forty years until you are young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college; you party until you’re ready for high school; you go to grade school; you become a little kid; you play. You have no responsibilities. You become a little baby; you go back into the womb; you spend your last nine months floating; and you finish up as a gleam in somebody’s eye.” 

I’m in the midst of the end of my mom’s life. On July 4th, Independence Day, my mom was found lying on her floor after a fall. While we were celebrating freedom my mom’s freedom was drastically changing shape. She broke her pelvis so badly from the fall that her Orthopedist asked if she fell off a building. There was the ER, the admission to the hospital, and a meeting with her medical team. It was a game-changer. My mom, while in agonizing pain, made the choice for hospice. The palliative doctor predicted that she has 6 months or less to live. Yet, day by day my mom’s situation is improving. In the nursing home she started to rally, her pelvis is healing, she’s getting better. Recently, I witnessed her go from bed ridden to a wheel chair to standing and a bit of walking. Death is not imminent. Her vitals are good. But her view of her circumstances is pretty grim. She thought when she picked hospice that she was actualizing her passing. She tells God to take her. Of course, that’s not how it works. “Man’s days are determined and God has decreed the number” (Job 14:5). So where does that leave us? 

Is this the dying process or is this living? If you know me, you know that my mind inherently goes to the depths. I think about all the people that just so happen to be living their lives right now, too. We’re sharing the planet with this specific 8 billion person group at this specific time. I did not know my great grandparents but they lived in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century alongside Albert Einstein, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Marie Curie, Pablo Picasso, Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, Henry Ford, Vladimir Lenin, Orville Wright, Ho Chi Minh, Laura Ingalls Wilder, HG Wells, and Carl Jung to name a few. They all breathed air, dreamed dreams, lived and died in the same era. Obviously the notables left a legacy. Some for evil, some for good, but everyone left a mark. I think there was a purpose to each individual life during their specific lifespan. The future is born of each person.

My mom was born in 1943. At the burgeoning of World War II. She was the 8th child of 10. She grew up poor, in St. Paul. Both her parents worked and the children were left to raise themselves; the older raising the younger. There were many catastrophes the children survived. Yet when I ask my mom if she had a good childhood she says, emphatically, “Yes! My parents were hardworking people and they provided for us.” My mom married in 1965. The same year MLK attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery (Bloody Sunday), the state funeral of Winston Churchill, Malcolm X is assassinated, the Vietnam War escalates, Medicare and Medicaid are established, A Charlie Brown Christmas debuts on CBS. My mom was pregnant with her first baby. She was 22 years old. For the next 40 years my mom was raising kids. She describes motherhood and her children this way; “I don’t know what I would have done without you kids”. There was great purpose in this vocation for her.

I can’t enumerate all the world events that shaped the era I was given. I was the caboose of Gen X and the dawn of Millennials. And now I am alive alongside all the Tech giants. Technology is the spirit of the times. In 2,063 I will be 81 years old, the age my mother is now. By 2,100 I will be gone and my children will be 84 and 81. Time keeps bearing the future. This material universe is bursting with design, mastery, mystery and wonder but the spiritual world is even more vast and mysterious. The conscious domain, our awareness of our existence- our thoughts and dreams and feelings- is almost infinite. Why are we, we alone, given this self-conscious agency? Why is it wrapped up in our temporary mortal bodies? This infinite software is constrained inside a clunky machine and without the machine the whole operation dies. Or does it? 

I think my mom’s soul is aching to be freed from its borders. It is reaching for heaven. What began on freedom day was God beginning the homeward journey for my mom. Someday she will be set free, home, in her new eternal residence. I don’t want her gone, though. I yearn for insight on how we enjoy these final months or years while my mom is, indeed, still living. There is purpose to be found in this specific season.

What is my mom’s life? A birth, a good childhood, a loved family, hopes, dreams, triumphs and sufferings, old age, slowing down, inertia, death. Or, rather, this. Death, inertia, old age, sufferings and triumphs, dreams, hopes, a loved family, a good childhood, birth… the gleam in our Creators eye. Arms wide open. Come home my child. I’ve been waiting for you. I love you. 

For some reason, when I’ve been thinking about death I’ve been imagining an ocean. A vast, deep, body of water, undulating with waves, gentle crests, peace, calm, life-giving, life-receiving, embryonic, the alpha and the omega. The lyrics in the Hillsong Worship song Oceans say:

You call me out upon the waters

The great unknown where feet may fail

And there I find You in the mystery

In oceans deep my faith will stand

Your grace abounds in deepest waters

Your sovereign hand will be my guide

Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me

You’ve never failed and You won’t start now

So I will call upon Your Name

And keep my eyes above the waves

When oceans rise

My soul will rest in Your embrace

For I am Yours and You are mine

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders

Let me walk upon the waters

Wherever You would call me

Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander

And my faith will be made stronger

In the presence of my Saviour

Spirit lead my mom, take her deeper than her feet can wander, in the presence of her Savior.