I miss you, Omi...

My grandma, Omi, passed away this Monday, the day after her 84th birthday. Tough as us Germans are, one can only take so much. The fourth heart turn, along with infections, cancer and other body failure, took her life. It was so sudden, and my whole life feels like it's been thrown upside-down. You know in your head that they won't live forever, but your heart never really lets you accept that until after it's happened. Even now, I struggle to believe it. It's been a terribly hard week, and will be a terribly hard Christmas.

I've learnt three hard lessons this week...

1. You don't get a warning.
A year or two ago while on mission in Warrnambool, I had a dream that the family was all going off to dinner because it was the last meal we would have with Omi. She was going to die, and we knew the time, so we were having a goodbye feast. I woke up creeped out and crying. Often in life we have send-offs for people moving away or going on long trips. But you don't get that in these sorts of circumstances. We did get our goodbye feast with Omi (her birthday celebration), but we didn't know it was that at the time.

From this I've learnt that we all need to be prepared for two very big things:
a) Be prepared to face your Maker - are you really ready to do that?
b) Be prepared to lose your opportunities. You never know when the people you love will go to face God - have you told them all you can?

2. Don't delay obedience.
Along similar lines, we need to realise that - unlike homework tasks, assignments and projects - we don't have forever to carry out God's instructions to us. We need to be ready to jump up and do what God has said, with urgency. I'm haunted by the questions: What if I had prayed more? What if I had talked to her about God?

3. Your spiritual life needs to be constantly activated.
I went along to the physio on Wednesday and we began training my transversus abdominis (TA), which are kinda deep core muscles responsible for generally holding us up and together. Part of my problem is that these muscles are weak, and my body uses the 'action muscles' to do most tasks, hence they become strained or spasm (or something like that). The goal of the exercises is to train up my TA by 'activating' it more and more, until it becomes second nature to have it 'on' while doing other things and to be using it as it was intended.

Sitting with my unchurched family all week, I felt so disconnected from anything spiritual. As they talked about death, it was the first time I can recall ever hating my faith. My faith told me things I didn't want to think about. I wanted to believe what my family believed, because it was easier to bear. I struggled to keep my quiet time - I was afraid of what God might say to me. But, much like our TA, the spiritual side of our lives was designed by God to support the rest of our lives, not to play backbench. It was designed to be constantly activated. Like my TA, it needs to be trained up so that it can reach this point. When we try to rely on our own strength or substitutes for God, it's like relying on our outer muscles - we get strained and break-down. This means sticking to God in the tough times. It means being obedient to Him. It means living godly always, not just on Sundays or during your quiet time. [Interesting note: I would never have considered myself a 'Sunday Christian', but am I at risk of limiting God's place in my life to a mere window of quiet time each day???]


I wonder if I could use this for a 'sermon' some time?