Death & Birth

There was a time in my life when I thought every person experienced one birth and one death. I’ve since grown up enough to learn that is not true. Of course I learned as a child that one must be reborn of the spirit in order to have new life in Christ. Okay 2nd birth, not always followed by the necessary death, but that’s not the point. I’m beginning to think that life is made up of series of births and deaths, not in any particular order, and not dependent on one another. As we grow and change, new ideas, attitudes, outlooks are birthed in us. Sometimes they come with hard labor, lots of frantic breathing, and strained pushing before they make their way into the world. Sometimes we squat down and with little effort, there they are – new concepts, fresh passions - and then we get back to work with our newborn perspective. Either way, thoughts, emotions, perceptions are born and die, sometimes every day. The labor is often intense and the letting things go even more so. Why is it we hold on to so much stuff that just needs to die already? Dying and birthing repeating themselves over and over again if we are willing to let go, breathe, and sometimes push; sometimes push REALLY hard.

It has not eluded me that dying is hard, and living is often harder still. I think personally I struggle more with the living. Can’t I just “be”? But there’s not a lot of living in just being. A wise man recently told me “Good is the enemy of Great.” I believe he got that line from a book. I’m actually not certain how wise he is, but he has the gray hair and glasses for the gig so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. It works for the illustration anyway. The point here is I don’t want to settle. I want to birth new ideas and let some of the old ones die. I want to make room for the new life that wants to come, regardless of the labor pains that come with it. Maybe the past 10 years have been the equivalent of 9 months of pregnancy. Up through about the 8th month of pregnancy I was afraid of what labor and delivery would be like. In the 9th month, I was so insanely uncomfortable it really didn’t matter what kind of torture I had to endure to get the baby out – it was coming out. (For those of you who knew me when I was pregnant and remained my friend, I want to take this opportunity to apologize and say thank you.)

Lately that’s how I’ve been feeling - let's get on with it. Breathe deep, push hard, move the ideas out of the incubator of the soul and into the world, messy and kicking and screaming. So what if they’re not pretty? Let’s be honest – newborns usually aren’t, but they’ll grow.