I work as an ELL tutor at a local elementary school, where sometimes I also get called in as a substitute teacher. The other day I ended up subbing for the special ed class, where I had about five students in my care.
We were at the round table together working on math facts, when I noticed a book one of the little girls had with her. The child’s version of Heaven is For Real. It’s the story of the boy who apparently had a dream, or dreams about heaven. Anyways, it surprised me, so I asked the students about it, and Keri said it was her book. She has bouncy curly hair, two front teeth the size of Roger Rabbit’s, and round purple glasses. She’s nine.
Keri picked up her book and started to open the pages, gathering her thoughts, which were about death. She looked at the other students at the table and started to tell us about how when we die we can choose whether or not we want to go to heaven. In particular, Keri turned to her good friend Leah, who is also her arch nemesis about half the time, and proceeded to tell Leah all about heaven.
“When you die, do you want to go to heaven, Leah?” Keri asked, with all the seriousness of Billy Graham. It was a true evangelical moment.
Leah, who has severe attention deficit disorder, turned so fast I didn’t see it coming. She has black hair and big brown eyes, skinny as a twig. “I am going to die?” she asked, in absolute shock. Apparently, no one had yet told her she was a mortal being.
Keri who has the corner-market on death, knew all about our mortality. She inclined her head, leaned into Leah with all the tenderness and reverence of a Southern Baptist minister and said, “Yes, Leah. You. Are. Going. To. Die.”
Then she brought it home with the grand invitation on how Leah could get her very own ticket into heaven. Leah shook her head. “I don’t want to go to heaven if you’re going to be there,” she told her.
Unfortunately, for the sake of math facts, I had to end this profoundly amusing exchange. But I’ve thought about it ever since.
Keri is right. We are all going to die.
My mom is currently in Louisiana staying with my grandfather. He’s ninety-three and has lived a beautifully courageous life. He’s a war hero, a father, was a husband to my granny, a grandfather to heaps of grandkids and great-grandchildren, an engineer, a great cook, and a man who documented his life more diligently than anyone I’ve ever known. He is nearing the end of his days on this earth and my mom is taking care of him. This is so noble and beautiful.
I’m not a morbid person, but from time to time it’s good to be reminded. You. Are. Going. To. Die. It brings a whole lot of things into stark clarity.
So often by default, we choose fear and shackles, we choose insecurities over freedom, we choose to care what everyone around us thinks instead of pushing out into newfound territory and trying new things. We nit-pick and worry, we rant and rave, we complain instead of bless, and we miss out all the time on the beauty and wonder, the glory of this one and only life we get to live.
Yes, you are going to die. It’s the truest thing about this life.
But you get to choose how you want to live, you get to name your dreams and your longings, your hopes, and your ambitions, and you get to choose if you live with a lifted heart, or a trapped one.
You get to decide if you want to go on the hunt for God and find out what the great mystery is all about.
You get to choose whether or not to awaken your heart and choose vulnerability.
You get to choose whether or not it’s ever going to be time to dust off some of those aspirations you’ve always had and take a risk …
You get to choose who you are going to love and honor and cherish …
It’s so easy to get stuck in the rut of doing what you’ve always done just because you’ve always done it. It’s take discipline and intention to choose life, to choose to see what’s going on around you and be present to it.
It’s a spiritual practice to wake up and say, “Today, I choose life.”
For Reflection and Conversation: What does it mean for you to choose life? I’d love to hear how you have made radical choices to be awake and present rather than asleep and dull.
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