A few weeks ago my teammates and I watched Braveheart. I’d seen it previously, but this time it meant more to me. When the funeral scene came I felt a stirring inside of me, a type of “I know,” if that makes sense.
The funeral for Moses did something to me emotionally, deep inside that I’m still working thru. It brought me to a new reality. I saw death before me and a grief like I never knew. Moses’ community hasn’t gotten itself into a great hurry like the rest of the world. They have each other and that’s about it. I met true grief face to face again and this time it exposed a wonderful scar on my heart that didn’t recognize before.
When I first saw grief in death, accompanied by utter brokenness, pathetic and bare, I did not even know what it was. Marvin and his family brought me to the edge of myself. Everything I lived for was thrown into question. I no longer knew who God was or who I was. And to top it all, I had no clue how to put all these emotions into words, much less sort them out in my mind.
God allowed Marvin and Moses to take all that I was and shatter me. I was left to either pick up the pieces, feebly putting myself back together or to leave myself behind and discover the true depth of my identity: who God intends me to be.
I think that’s kind of what William Wallace went thru when he lost his wife. OK, he was partly filled with rage, but I think he also realized thru this new brokenness that there was something more to him than him. He was laid bare and there was no turning back. It was life or death. “All men die,” he says. “Not all men truly live.”
That’s what I’m realizing. I know I’m not that important, but I can make a difference. Thru these experiences of death God led me to the edge of myself and further. It was only thru this brokenness, this true reality that I was able to realize my pathetic state. I had to get outside of myself to see who I had been.
I’m no longer trying to concern myself with what people think of me. I’m trying to learn the fullness of life and embrace it. There are adventures to be had! There is a mystery to live and a people to love.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
I’m determined that when I am on my deathbed, I won’t really mind.
