Note: This is a filed entry Chad wrote some months ago, but never published. Publishing it now, with his permission. Quick update from Chad on his health: “I am doing great, still working through some residual things related to the transplant but I have regained all my weight/strength and beyond. Feel in better shape now than I did when I was 25.” - Janelle
Ecclesiastes isn’t an easy read. A king looks back on his conquests and muses the significance of all his work. The wisest of kings splits the difference between Heaven and earth with razor edged Truth. He deduces that life is no more than “spitting into the wind.”
I have to tell you, as if maybe you didn’t already know, that I concur. Something happened inside me when Ryan died that I thought would revert back at some point, but it didn’t. Color bled off the pages of life. As many times as I’ve seen a globe, I now saw a flat earth. I still can’t label the feeling – grief, depression, detachment. But I didn’t think much of it because I knew the stages and figured it slid nicely somewhere into one of those slots.
But it’s not a phase. Yes, wounds heal and memories soften.
But I think maybe, that perspective is how God means for us to see life here. What I mean is, this place has become our everything. And I don’t think it was ever meant to be. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t embrace the rich moments with family and friends. But I think it does mean to keep an eternal perspective so eternity is the backdrop to everything we do.
I never saw life from this perspective until that night. Who knows if I would have ever ‘got it’? Those that do get it without having to go through something like this – well, they have incredible insight. And I admire them.
There will be a day when I’ll look back on this time of my life and read these pages. Will they trigger foreign emotions and perspectives that got lost somewhere while I was spitting into the wind? I hope not. I don’t want to lose what I feel now, or maybe, what I don’t feel. I guess it IS detachment. That IS the label.
I’m detached from this place. It doesn’t have a hold on me. It’s one thing to not fear death. It’s a whole other animal to not fear living after disrobing the falsehoods in our lives. It’s an awesome, terrifying realization that my eyes and heart are so fixated on the other side of Heaven that this life is exposed for what it is – a teaser. A preamble.
It’s the forward to my life’s book. The real story doesn’t even start here.
But what does that mean for me now then? How then do I live right now, next week, next year? That’s still a tough question to answer, and I’d be a fool to pretend to know.