Pardon My Dust

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Last week I posted about being reborn.

Today, I'm posting about dying.

This is what is happening to me. I am being crucified with Christ. I am entering into His suffering and losing my life, MY life, MY dreams, MY goals, MY whole self. Little by excruciating little, I am being stripped of my idea of who I am, ultimately to exchange my life for His death. This is not a choice I made or the "Ten Steps to Crucifixion." I could not lay my own life down. I still don't want to. But I am losing it, to Him.

I want my epitaph to read: "Life, at last."

My husband says: "Jesus did not come to preach at us about the horrific struggle of dying to self and the OH SO GREAT rewards of those of us who learned the lesson of death to self. But your... fear? Paralysis, I'll call it, has been the dreaded process of death, which is kind of... natural - both the death and the fear thereof.

"But when Lynette told you there was ... not just hope: LIFE on the other side - it shifts from the loss of self to the gain of Christ - not the gain of Christ at our expense."

"What you experienced [in your disillusionment] after the hospital, and what so many Christians buy, believing in essence that one has to commit some complicated ritualistic suicide by which God will condescend to honor us with explanation, maturity, and wisdom - that's not it at all."

"It's not the embrasure of death that honors God or that even explains 'what Jesus was about.' It's His life through us. And He's not even running a competition with us
('tick, point off for not dying to self today and letting me have free reign.''tick, point off for being selfish.''tick, point off for harboring resentment.')"

"If we die, we gain Christ. If we live, we live by Christ. If the Spirit of God, the creator, the God of Life who raised his dead son to life dwells in us, then that same spirit will also give life to our mortal flesh because it already lives in us."

What he said.

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