Dreaming in the Moment

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. -Henry David Thoreau

This month I will have attended three funerals: my father's on July 2nd, Janene and Abigale's was yesterday, and Alaura, a 12-year old girl who is the sister of one of Jeremy's best buddies, passed away from cancer a few nights ago. Her service is this Sunday.

Waves of grief, grief unimaginable, have crashed upon our family this month. It has been surreal, like a waking dream.

Yesterday Janene and little Abigale were buried. The services were beautiful. We attended the graveside and also the memorial. Hundreds turned out for the memorial, evidence of how well loved Janene and Abigale were in the community.

I cannot believe she is gone. I miss her so much.

My soul is humbled by the losses that are happening around our family. I feel my mortality more than ever. I saw a Latin phrase recently, Memento Mori, which means,

Remember that you are mortal.

I do not struggle with being mortal, for though my skin and bones are mortal, I know that my soul is immortal, eternal, the living essence of who I am that is created in the forever image of God. I know that Janene, Abigale, Alaura, and my dad, are immortal, too. Death can take the body, but not the spirit.

I heard or read somewhere about death being like birth. When a baby is alive and growing in a mother's womb, that is the only world that they know. When they are born, they die to that hidden world, their birthing to this outside world is a kind of death, a passing, from the womb. It is simply a transition from one state to the next. This is how I see death. It is a doorway to the afterlife.

The mystery of why some die so young and some die so tragically swirls around my community. It raises the ancient questions of why does God allow suffering and evil, like cancer in little girls bodies, to go unchecked. Does he not care?

I do not wrestle with this. I am convinced that God does not inspire tragedy nor disease. I do not comfort myself with trite cliches like "God has a plan" or "It was their time..." I don't buy into that. I do not see God like a Director in the sky who has a script that calls for families to die in head-on collisions or kids to die from cancer. I do not see God like this. I do not think he has every little thing under his control. We are not passive beings who are unknowingly puppeteered by the invisible hand of a control freak of a god.

Life and death happens. Tragedy happens. Cancer steals children and disease claims bodies. I can only wonder at it all, at the moments that we are privileged to have with those we love. I do not blame God for these sudden losses. He is not like that, not the God that I know.

I had a dream a few nights ago. I was running for my life from a huge tornado that was devouring everything in it's path. I was running together with a young teenaged couple. We found shelter in a cement bunker. I was safe. The young couple cuddled and in my dream I felt safe, that even if the tornado landed directly over us we would be safe in our cement bunker.

I woke up from the dream and knew it was from God. I believe in God dreams, as I call them, that God will speak to us in our sleep if we pay attention. One of the Psalms says that God gives to his beloved even while they sleep. Every person at our house has had at least one God dream.

I wondered about the dream as we drove to church. I tried to figure it out. Some of it was obvious: the bible describes God as our Rock, our Shelter, the Secret Place who keeps us safe.

During worship at our church, the dream suddenly unlocked for me. As I stood there in the loving presence of God, I worshiped him from my place of sorrow. I spoke to him of how I know he is good and kind and I hold no blame against him. There is no accusation in my soul towards God. That's when the dream's meaning unfolded for me:

The teenage couple, young and healthy, full of vitality, are a picture of the Love and Kindness of God. It is the intimate friendship I have with God, of knowing that he is Loving and Kind, that gives me a safe place of shelter from the unpredictable tragedies of life. God's love and kindness is my shelter, my refuge, my rock.

So this is where I am living, in the eternity of each moment, that God's goodness is with me, and me with him.

There is mystery to the suffering and loss in this life. But there is no mystery to the loving nature of a benevolent God who has given us the gift of immortality.