Sleeping

Matthew 25:6 – “But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’”

There is a saying that we find love when we’re not looking for it. There are times that love comes to us unexpectedly. So do many things; illness, accidents, job loss, promotions, babies, and death to name a few. Here in our text, the bridesmaids were waiting for the groom, but were sleeping. I spent quite a lot of my time in life sleeping – not literally, but metaphorically. Sleep walking through life.

I spent my twenties, thirties and forties traveling around the Southwest US as well as to other countries. I love going to new places and seeing new things. I’m glad I did because traveling costs me physically now. I’m not old, I have lupus. Traveling requires lots of sunscreen and prednisone as well as time to recuperate when I get back. It’s quite rough on my body and my mind. Yet there are still reasons to travel – my niece getting married being one. That’s why I’m so glad I was able to do all that traveling while younger. Going to a foreign country would be really rough. It would take a lot for me to get on that plane now. 

Given that, I want to write about illness and death as surprises. I was in my twenties and living in Japan when I began to be symptomatic. I was symptomatic as a child, but no one knew what was wrong, why I was getting so many headaches. It really hit when I returned to the US; I could no longer ignore it. Hearing the news was depressing – I was only 30 years old. It felt like my life was over. I was lucky, my doctors believed me. I’m still lucky – I have no organ involvement. Lupus will not kill me, just make going outside a pain in the ass. But I didn’t know any of that at first. No one knows how an illness will affect us physically.

Just as illness seems remote when we’re healthy, death seems remote when we’re young. It doesn’t seem remote to me now. It simultaneously feels as though there wasn’t enough time and that I’m okay with dying. Mind you, I’m not okay with my husband dying. 😊 Just as the bridesmaids were awakened by the appearance of the groom, we will all be awakened one day to the reality of our own death. And like the coming of Jesus, we don’t know the day or the hour. 

It might feel strange to say live so you’ll have a good death, but I think that’s what life is; preparing for death. If we have not slumbered through life, we will probably have fewer regrets. I won’t be able to do the traveling I did even five years ago, but I have no regrets. My life has a different focus today; a focus it should have had all along. That is to do what I can for others rather than myself. The things I am involved in here in Cleveland are food to my soul in the same way that traveling was back in the day. I am very grateful to say that if I died tomorrow, I would have few regrets about my life. I realize not many people can say that.

If you’re one of those people, there’s still time to change it if you wish. Maybe today is a good day to think about what gives meaning to our lives and how that relates to our deaths. There’s no time like the present.

B