the view from eternity

Sometimes i think that writing about deep spiritual thoughts is something i should do only sometimes.  But you know, i turned 39 this year.  I'm pretty sure deep spiritual thoughts, might just be part of who i am.  I think i'll stop fighting it.

So here's one for you.

Recently, i heard a little story on the radio, told by the Christian singer, Mandisa, telling her inspiration for one of her songs.  The song is irrelevant to this particular deep thought (it's Overcomer), but the story made me think.

I'm rusty on the writing, and i'm trying to cram some decent blogging into an insufficient time slot, so try to ignore the non-smoothness of this post.

The story is about a friend (of Mandisa, not me), who heartbreakingly (if it's not a word, it certainly should be) became pregnant with her second child AND learned that she had breast cancer, in the same short season of life.  This friend had to go through prenatal care and chemotherapy at the same time, and in the interest of protecting her unborn child, didn't undergo all the chemotherapy she might have, if she weren't simultaneously nurturing her growing child.  The overly summarized, apparent end of this story, is that this loving mother lost her battle with cancer, leaving two children without a mother, and i'm just guessing, a husband without his wife.

This story definitely made me cry.  It was about 30 seconds of radio airtime, but i got pretty invested in the plight of this unnamed friend in that short time, and i was disappointed that her story ended this way.  Until i realized that this was far from the end of her story.

We, currently earthbound mortals, are generally very short-sighted.  We think that the end of our story is indicated by the day our bodies stop breathing.  But it isn't.  Not even close.

This lady in the story, whose name i don't know, made a choice.  She could easily have chosen to go to every length to save her own life, at the expense of her unborn baby.  She could have reasoned that her older child needed a mother.  She could easily have justified a decision to save her own life and to purposely end the life of her child in order to do so.  But she didn't.

I don't know her, and i don't know what she thought, but i imagine that she might have decided that if the purpose of her life on earth was to give life to these to children, and then exit this world, that that was going to be ok with her.  I imagine that she conceived not only a baby, but the concept that God must have some purpose for this life inside of her, the impact of which was worth her giving up hers, if necessary.  I think that she had to at some point, decide that she would give everything and anything to preserve this eternal purpose growing in her body.

I might not be explaining it right, but the realization of what i imagine God's perspective to be on this whole situation, made me cry even more than my first encounter with this story, but in a different way.

We rarely remember that our lives are meant for eternity, not just earthly life.  Even though we don't understand what the other side of our physical mortality looks like, there's a whole lot more happening in that dimension, stuff that we sometimes just catch a tiny glimpse of, a glimpse that we need to try to hang on to.  To keep perspective on the comparably menial trials of this life.  It's just THIS life.  It's really important to do it well, but it's not the end.  It's just the preamble to eternity.

You thought i was going to say, "it's just the beginning," but i didn't.   For extra cheese, i could have, but i was going for truth, not cheese.