I look at my life and I see how richly blessed I am - a loving wife and best friend, surrounded by family and friends who I love and who love me, and I am happy at work.
It is strange then, that today, I think about dying.
Don't get me wrong. I am not contemplating suicide, or have received bad news and I'm certainly not depressed.
I have seen three deaths in the past three weeks in my ED. Two of them were young and unexpectedly sudden, and no amount of miracle of modern medicine could bring them back.
A lot of us fear death. We try and fight it off with health supplements and exercising regularly. Others build monuments unto themselves - we get a wing of a hospital building named after us, we build statues or get our names written in history books, we write blogs that will last forever in cyberspace. (erhem)
We try and grasp at immortality, hoping that one day someone will remember us, whisper our name, and knew that we somehow mattered. But buildings are torn down, statues will crumble, and blogs can easily be deleted.
All my life, there have been moments when I have simply thought that I would rather be dead. Most of the time, it is right before something stressful is about to happen, with all the anxious anticipation leading up to it. I cannot count the number of times that I have prayed for God to take me right before some major exam (He never obliged) or when I had to address a huge crowd, or (when I was a little more junior) some night shifts at work where I had to be in charge of the Emergency Department.
The other times I have thought about dying is when I look back at a life well lived, and then having that passing thought of 'You know what, I could die right now, and it would be fine.'
I do not fear death. Suffering, perhaps, but not death.
The main reason for that, I think, is a quiet confidence in my God. I do not claim to be a model Christian, I am not sure if I have even won one soul to His Kingdom and I lead a life that some would raise their eyebrows at.
But I have a quiet assurance in who my God is. I have heard Him roaring in the hurricanes during the storms of my life, I have heard His whispers when I am surrounded by nature. I catch up with Him from time to time, praying in my car on the long drives to Bendigo and the Northern, understanding His heart in church on Sundays, wrestling with Him when I see injustices in a broken world. I see His fingerprints all over the story of my life and I rejoice when I recognise it in the stories my friends tell me.
I find His penmanship in my Bible but also in movies like The Dark Knight and Matrix and Avatar and the myriad of other stories that deal with sin and salvation.
And I know this - that I can trust Him. That I have journeyed with Him through my father's disability, through my own surgery and through times of great rejoicing as well, and I know that His heart is good. And hopefully one day, when I do cross over into the other side, He will look up at me and say 'Hey, I know you.'
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