How To Postpone Death

Lately I have been realizing how much time in  life is lived in an attempt  to avoid pain. I “wrap (my heart) carefully around hobbies and little luxuries,” as CS Lewis stated in “The Four Loves,” eliminating all risk. I  make everything about safety- precautions, insurance. Try as I may, heartache is inevitable.  Pain will find me. So I get disillusioned and swear it will never happen again. I cower and cover and hide.

At times, I am aware of this irony. I want life, real life that leaves me breathless and in awe, yet when I take the safe road, when I hoard my heart, when I chose just what is logical, I strangle myself slowly. Anais Nin declared,

“I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.”

As my eyes are opening to what life truly is, I begin to see that maybe avoiding pain is what will kill me in the long run. Sure, I may stay “safe and secure” (whatever that means) but my soul will shrivel up.

I have this paradigm shift turning within me, and I am going to try my best to put it into words:
Lately, I feel like the best decision is always the one where I am not taking the easy way out. It is never the current with the smoothest sailing. Yes, all that is in my physical and logical being screams to chose this path. I long for safety, for assurance, for life to be “easy”. Yet beyond that, there is this wild and passionate nature that hollers to be set free from such bondage. I need adventure, I need risk, and yes, with all of that, I need pain. It goes hand in hand.

I need the valley in order to see the mountain. I need the ups and downs. I need to be broken and then feel whole again. Life is a such a vapor. I don’t have time to twiddle my thumbs and hope everything will be fine, “normal.” I don’t have time to “just get by.”

I am beginning to understand that Jesus came to give life and life abundantly. That the apostle Paul actually meant it when he said that he can find joy in suffering.

I am beginning to see that maybe instead of assuming God wants me to be snug and secure all the time, I can know He has come to give LIFE, and life on this earth means beauty and pain. They intertwine, hardly separable.

“The end will justify the pain it took to get us there.” (Relient K)

I am becoming more and more convinced that making decisions marely based on what is “safe” castrates the heart.

And so, I pray that fear would no longer hold me back. That I would “Carpe Diem” in every sense of the phrase. That I would run forward, not even thinking about falling. That I would know that grace surrounds me like oxygen.

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” – Helen Keller