Kathy Looper Christian Counseling

Kathy Looper Christian Counseling

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Eternity~ The fate that awaits us all

It began in the spring of 2012.  As my husband and I crawled into bed, shared conversation about the day and grab our books that we where each reading, the quiet torment of death played through the thoughts of my mind.  Night after night and day after day these thoughts persisted.   Incredibly afraid to put voice to my thoughts and fears, I didn’t tell my husband and tried to pretend they didn’t exist. I prayed about it, I asked God to remove the fear from me and I rationalized through all the reasons why this prevailing thought was absurd.  After several months, I learned how to ignore the fear and fall sleep. In early 2014, I began to think about writing my obituary.  When this thought of writing my obituary came to me, I found it peculiar and wondered why I was suddenly thinking about such a morbid task.  I didn’t feel fear as I had in 2012, what I began to feel was a bit of acceptance.  I did not write my obituary, I let the moment pass and wondered again where this thought was coming from. 

Tonight, as I sit at home and write this column, I can say with a strange kind of peace and acceptance that I am in fact, dying.

When these intuitions on mine began to present themselves in 2012, I was completing my undergraduate degree in Psychology and getting ready to start graduate school.  Graduation has come and gone and I am now working in my field as a Marriage and Family Therapist Intern, which means I can practice therapy under a licensed clinician while accumulating the hours needed to become a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist or LMFT for short.  After receiving my registration number with the Board of Behavioral Sciences, I was so anxious to begin working!  I applied for many jobs without much luck. One day, a LMFT acquaintance that I had met recommended that I look into the hospice field and do some of my licensure hours in grief counseling.   I had a visceral reaction to that idea.  I have been loosing friends and loved ones to death since I was in the 7th grade and dealing with death on a daily basis in my professional life was the last thing I wanted to do.  So I continued to apply and interview for jobs but having no luck.  Then in an abrupt and unexpected moment, my father-in-law was discharged from Stanford Medical Center after a routine visit that led to a hospital stay, and admitted to Gentiva Hospice.   I didn’t know the first thing about hospice or how it worked, all I knew was that those are the people that get called when a person is sick and the doctors can no longer help.    My father-in-law passed away just 6 hours after arriving home from the hospital.  A few weeks after we laid him to rest, I reconsidered the idea of grief counseling and applied for a position with Gentiva Hospice.  The fact that I was working in a field that deals with death on a daily basis was not lost on me and given my own intuition over the past few years I found myself asking God what it was he was trying to tell me.   What was even more worrisome to me was that I had been feeling a very strong pull to get involved with the Suicide Prevention Task Force.  I have had an interest in that organization for many years.  I have lost two friends and several acquaintances to suicide.  When I made the call to become a volunteer, I was told the organization needed the most help for the LOSS team.  LOSS is an acronym that stands for Local Outreach to Suicide Survivors and the LOSS team volunteers respond to the scene with the coroner’s office in the event that a suicide occurs.   Without hesitation I joined the team, coming to terms that there must be a reason I have been called into this particular area of work.  As they say in the recovery world, “acceptance is the key” and I was certainly finding that to be true for me.


            
I am several months into my work now and have worked with many patients and families as they receive the dreaded news of a terminal illness and experience the transition of life and loosing a loved one.  It is often a very sad and also a very rewarding experience.
           
I live with the belief that “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delights in his way” (Psalms 37:23).  In the book of Job, the bible also says “For HIS eyes are on the ways of man and he sees all his steps” (Job 34:21) so I continued to pondered and wonder out loud to God why he has me working around death.  One thing that I am aware of on a conscious level daily is how certain death is and how in the face of death, the cares of daily life don’t seem to hold that much importance.  I am grateful for this awareness.

Tonight as I reflect, the puzzle pieces I have been collecting since 2012 are beginning to fit together in picture form I can see what it is meant to reveal.  I am dying and I have a keen awareness of the time I have left, or the lack there of.  I cannot shake this awareness and I am becoming more and more at peace with it every day.  It is a blessing actually.  Knowing I am dying allows me to live more intentional than ever before.  It has enlarged my capacity to love, to forgive and to show kindness (although I struggle with this when driving).  I am 100% the epitome of human failure.  My ability to expression those virtues have been left many scars on those I have loved throughout my life and I have made many mistakes that I cannot undo, but…my capacity for love, forgiveness and kindness is enlarging with this new-found knowledge and for that, I am grateful.  However, the thing that I have noticed the most since coming to terms with my inevitable demise is the unexplainable realization of how insignificant I am in the presence of the Almighty God.  Words cannot convey the power and majesty of God as I feel him in this space of my life.  I think perhaps only the people facing death have any kind of glimpse of this reverent and holy God for the certainty of eternity is more present than ever.   Perhaps the best illustration I could use to describe how I feel is about the enormity of God is the one found in Job beginning at Chapter 38 when God himself spoke to Job out of a whirlwind.  I have found myself reading and re-reading that passage and others in the bible over the past few months.
           

Doctors cannot give the terminally ill patients an exact date of their death, nor do I have a date for my own, one thing is sure, death is a certain outcome and I have come to see it as a blessing.  I have a limited amount of time on this earth and I don’t know how much time I have.  Knowing this inspires me to live on purpose with purpose.  I need to share my life with others and tell as many people as I can about the love of God, his goodness and his kindness.  I want to scream from the mountaintop that any other message about God is a lie! God is not cruel, he isn’t responsible for the atrocities of this world- there is an opposing power to God’s love for humanity and that opposing power is evil.   Whatever time I have left on this earth, I want to spend it helping people understand that eternity is real.  Our souls will live in eternity after our body dies.  I consider it a gift to know my time is limited and I pray I never forget that.  I heard someone say just the other day that we are all just one breath away from eternity I know it sounds cliché but what if you knew you where dying?  What would you do different?  Who would you forgive?  Who would you love more?  How would you spend your time?  Would you keep silent on issues you wished you had spoken up about?  Would you pursue the desires in your heart that you have repressed?  Truth is still truth whether we believe it or not!  The Bible is the inspired word of God and one day we will all stand before our maker and give an account of our life.  I know this is a hard subject to face, but my prayer is that after reading this article, you will take a few moments to slow down, consider how you spend your time and if you are inclined, ask God to help you understand his purpose for your life.  You where created for a reason, don’t you want to fulfill your purpose?  

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Kathy Looper, MA MFTi

Kathy Looper, MA MFTi
Marriage & Family Therapist