KATHY ON DEATH

KATHY ON SEX DEATH

Now that's a title absolutely no one wants to read.  I should have called it "Kathy on Sex" then everyone would at least peek.

In the last week we heard of the death of a high school classmate and a college friend, both woman.  Somehow when the obits are your contemporaries, you glance over your shoulder for the grim reaper.

In ministry we are well acquainted with funerals.  A local funeral home calls on me to play for people who have no church nor musician.  I've heard countless eulogies.  I don't fear death but I am afraid of the process.  

As I age, my body reminds me I'm moving to the front of the line into the pearly gates.  Any day above ground is a good day.  As a Christian I know that heaven is far better.

So I ponder how I want to face these years which may hold suffering, sickness eventually death.  Here are a few points that guide me:

1. God planted eternity in my heart.  So I lift my head above this world and keep heaven in view.  It changes how I face today's circumstances.  Newscasts upsetting?  "In the last days perilous times shall come. . ."  He warned us.  Look up!

2. Life is a vapor.  I am consumed with living, not dying.  I savor, cherish each day, my friends, good times, every moment as a gift.  Live life abundantly!

3. God is preparing a place for me.  He's also preparing me for that place.  So I allow my mind to imagine a new home, a grand welcoming, peace and health unending in God's glorious presence.  I also allow Him to chip away at my character, carving out His image more clearly.

4. Signs of aging speak to me.  Aching joints, loss of energy, wrinkles, gray hair. . .all remind me that I am a soul with a body, not a body with a soul.  Focus on the eternal.  Lord, deliver me from becoming a whining old lady!

You can sit on the pity pot

but don't stay there long enough to get

ring-around-the-hiney!

5. Cancer.  That's the big one we all fear.  But whatever diagnosis, accident or illness comes my way, I choose to think of it as my chariot to heaven.  Something has to take me there.  Sure I'd love to go like Enoch but that's not going to happen.  So even now I tell myself to get ready, see it as a means, not an end.  Death will be the beginning of what I was created for.

6. Hold loosely the gifts God has given me, whether things or people.  Hold tightly to the Giver.  As we declutter our home, we also declutter our lives.  I choose to focus on what's truly valuable.  

Nothing amazing in my thoughts on death but I want my thoughts and choices to be His.