"i'm going to live again"

today i stopped home to grab some cold meds and my phone rebate(long overdue). This past Sunday my Grandma Bierma was hospitalized with pneumonia and the last week has been spent basically waiting for her to pass away. This isn't a sudden development because ..well, to put it simply, she's old. She's spent 92 years on earth, and recently, each one of those years has weighed down on her health. I think our whole family has been anticipating this day, and not anticipating in the excited sense of the word, but has seen this day coming, especially in the last several years. On my sixteenth birthday, she passed out in our living room chair, and ever since, I've slowly been preparing myself for when this would happen, and now it is. At home my mom stopped in the house in the middle of calf chores, and just reminded me again of how uncertain the next few days are. After talking to her a little bit, I drove back to Dordt, and since its cold and I rarely use my car, I don't leave any cd's in my car. Driving in silence is not often something I relish, so naturally, I turned on the radio. Confession: I usually skip over the Christian music station in my browsing. The music doesn't always interest me, and I usually use it as a backup plan. However, today I checked it and the song Smile by Chris Rice was on.


blogger is being ridiculous and not letting me copy and paste

but the chorus goes

i just wanna be with you

i just want this waiting to be over

i just wanna be with you

and it helps to know the day is getting closer

every minute takes an hour

every inch feels like a mile

till i won't have to imagine

and i finally get to see you smile

and the second verse:

my journey's here but my heart is there

so i dream and wait, and keep the faith, while you prepare

our destiny, till you come back for me

oh, please make it soon

After my grandpa died 7 years ago, I distinctly remember hearing this same song on the radio. And I remember feeling the same comfort from it that I did today. While this song is more about our time left on earth and hoping for heaven, so it would seem to be a great song for those us with years and years left on the earth. However, here it felt so applicable to a dying grandmother. She's spent ninety-two years toiling her way through the good times and bad of this life, and it appears that her days of struggle will soon be over. Her wait is short, and her journey is almost done, but she's about so see what we should be hoping to see. She can sing this song more authentically than anyone else I know.

We rarely think of life as a time where we wait to go to heaven. Our lives are like standing in line at Walmart with the coolest product we could possibly imagine, just waiting for finally be checked out and get to use this sweet product. We should be excited and want to get through the line so we can finally open up the box and rip out the packing products and own it, but we're so occupied with standing in line that we forget what the point of standing in line is. We distract ourselves the whole way to the register, looking at magazines or grabbing a few more trinkets to buy, occasionally letting other people go before us. We stall as long as we can, choosing to just stand there with the box instead of checking out and opening it to what's inside.

Maybe thats a bad metaphor, but I feel like that's how I'm living my life, and that's how a lot of us do. Do I really just want this waiting to be over? I can't say I'm spending my life anticipating leaving this world, and if I was told "the day is getting closer" I'd be freaked out that my death was coming up(and even more creeped out someone knew that), not excitedly waiting to go.

My extended family has exchanged many emails the past few days, and one included some of the few things my grandma has been able to speak during her periods of consciousness when my uncle, her oldest son, was with her this morning. She said in distress,

"I'm going to die. I'm going to die"

Seconds later, she spoke again.

"I'm going to live again. I'm going to live again."

Oh Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll

The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend

Even so, it is well with my soul