I have had a tremendous fear of death since I was a child.

During my childhood people just disappeared and I was told they died. There was no cancer or heart attacks or strokes and there were no funerals. We may not have attended funerals because we didn’t have a car when I was growing up. It may have been because my mother was trying to shield us from death. So I always imagined people falling into a peaceful sleep forever. As you might imagine this naïve perspective could not last long. I watched a movie on Nostradamus and became terrified of dying in a nuclear attack. End of innocence.

Next was my closely related fear of hell. Because of some of the poor choice I had made in my life and because of what I had been taught about salvation, I was in constant fear that I would go to hell when I died. Some of my blogs will explain why I found it incredibly unfair that I would have survived so much only to go to hell.

Last year my aunt died after a short battle with lung cancer. She was in her early 50’s. The year before that my daughter’s boyfriend struggling with kidney failure died of a massive heart attack at 25 before my granddaughter was born. My little brother died in his 20’s. My very good friend from high school had a massive heart attack in her early 30’s. If you are fortunate, you die in your sleep at a good old age. In reality it may be a car crash, a capsized boat, a brain eating amoeba, AIDS, Cancer, heart attack, stoke, a hit and run, a gunman’s bullet as you pump gas, or thousands other causes.

The bottom line is WE ARE ALL DYING.

How do I respond to that? That depends on your belief system.

If I believed that there was no God and no heaven and no hell, death would be more frightening to me. It would be a matter of just ceasing to exist. I would mean my life was essentially a long walk on a short pier that will unexpectantly drop off and I will disappear. That would mean this life is it.

I believe that all the people I’ve lost are not lost. They are not even lost to me. I know that I’ll see them again. My growing faith is making so many things clearer for me. I do not fear death anymore and I’m trying to raise my children not to fear it either. My son at 9 or 10 said it best. He said I don’t fear death, I fear dying. I fear dying in pain and fear. I fear dying badly. But I don’t fear death. The transition is what causes the fear. The unknown is what causes the fear. There are things I do know. I know that death is not the end. I know that Jesus purchased my eternity and I will see Him face to face one day. I know that I have a Father that loves me whose presence I will be in forever. I know I will spend far more time in my eternal life than I will have in this earthly one. No sickness and no sadness. This live will seem like a memory in the light of eternity.

Please pray for my friend and my sister in Christ, Joan.

Be blessed.