Like this:

Am I dying? I don’t know. On Saturday, I thought I was probably going to end up in the hospital, and I wondered if I would die. And I panicked, a little bit. It wasn’t that I might die, but that I hadn’t finished something. I had spent hours and hours organizing my house, and buying things I thought my family would need, and sorting through trash, and endlessly DOING things, that I hadn’t spent any time writing anything down for my children, or my husband, or my friends. I had things to say, and I hadn’t said them.

How do you know when you’re dying? How do you know it’s time? Do you wait until you DO know, or do you just start saying things, and hope that you get to repeat yourself?

Because I still have hope that I’m going to stick around for a little while longer. I believe that God is at work in my body, touching me, healing me, restoring me.

But maybe not. Maybe the healing I see in my future is the complete healing package. The ultimate healing. The moment that God flings open His kingdom to me and says, “Behold, the famine is ended. All you see before you is yours.”

And so, maybe I need to start saying some things.

Someone asked me to describe what it is like to begin to come to terms with my finite-ness.

I don’t know. I don’t know if I can come to terms with it yet.

But I’m thinking about it.
I’m praying about it, and I’m asking God to show me.
Show me the inheritance he has for me, which is still a mystery.

Last night, while I rested, sleepless in bed, I thought of my mother-in-law. My beloved Lois. I remembered the first time I met her. It was Christmas, and Bryan had picked me up at the airport in Saskatoon, and taken me to her home. She was in the living room; we walked in the back door, and I heard this really deep, smokey voice say, “Weeeeeeellllllll, Darlin’”

And there she was, holding out her little gnarled hands, face wreathed in a welcoming smile.

I think going to Heaven might be like that.

I keep picturing it as a journey, but like no journey I’ve ever undertaken.

I ALWAYS over plan my holidays. I over pack for my holidays. I over buy, overdo, over think.

But there is really no planning for this journey. No packing. In fact, I said to someone the other day that I feel the need to unpack for this journey.

We accumulate so much stuff in this life. So much flotsam and jetsam. So many superfluous items, and ideas, and opinions, and feelings. So many resentments and pettinesses. So much stuff. And for so long we think it’s important. We cling to it. We grasp it.

But what do we have at the end of our lives? What can we bring to Jesus that He needs, or wants? What can we take with us into eternity?

Nothing. Just our empty hands held out in supplication to the one Who fills us and redeems us.

That’s what it’s like to face my finite-ness. To realize that after 47 years on this earth, I still have nothing to give Him except my heart.

And to know that my heart is all He has ever really wanted.

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