Timshel

"I don't want to diiiiieee!"  Eden cried as she laid in bed last night.

I don't know what prompted these thoughts of death last night... Why do we die?  Will I have my camera and my pointer and my blanket and my Elmo in heaven?  I don't want to get bigger and bigger and then die!

I tried different tactics -- explaining that she'll be happy in heaven no matter what's there, that she's not gonna die for a long time, that dying is part of living -- and then I fell silent.

Because this is not the way it's supposed to be.  Because her fear of death and her longing to live is planted deep in us.  Because as natural as death has become, it was not part of the original plan.

Eden...the garden of perfection, of communion, of the fullest life.  I pray that my Eden will have her fullest life and that she will someday live in the second Eden where death has no place.

Life feels heavy lately.  I feel the weight of 'not the way it's supposed to be' as I hear of cancers returning, adoptions falling through, as I experience my own share of broken relationships and broken people.  I feel seeds of wanting to live a more full life dwelling in me.  Seeds of timshel, of making this life here in the East of Eden as good as it can possibly be.

I think my seeds are sitting in the frozen earth right now, surrounded by the decay and shit that may eventually give them the nutrients to grow.  I am not a good gardener, and I know that not all seeds grow.  I'm praying that my Gardener sees fit to give my family a drip of his grace, that we won't see death for a long time, that our seeds will break through come spring and turn into something beautiful that in turn gives life to something else.

"But the Hebrew word, the word timshel--'Thou mayest'--that gives a choice.  It might be the most important word in the world.  That says the way is open.  That throws it right back on a man.  For if 'Thou mayest'--it is also true that 'Thou mayest not.'

'Thou mayest'... makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice.  He can choose his course and fight it through and win."
     --John Steinbeck, East of Eden