Ending Forever

When you hear about the “Holiday Season” you hear two things.

1. This is the happiest time of the year

2. This is the saddest time of the year

I think December is both the happiest and the saddest time of the year because it reminds of two things: endings and beginnings. It’s the beginning of winter, but also the end of warm weather. It’s the beginning of a new year, but also the end of another year. It’s the end of the semester, but the beginning of the semester awaits us in January.

Endings are difficult for everyone

Whether we like to admit it or not, endings make us uncomfortable. We get used to the rhythm of our lives. Even if the rhythm is difficult, such as surviving the Molecular Biology or a hard TA assignment, we do not want to let go of that dance. Even if it is something that will make us happier, such as giving up a bad habit, we still take solace in our addiction.

Challenging the norm is difficult.

After all, normal is a good thing. Normal keeps us in check and takes little effort.

Scientists use the term “homeostasis” to describe the norm. If our bodies are in complete order, then we have acheived homeostasis. Every mechansim in our bodies is present so that we may acheive homeostasis. With that in mind, “the norm” is not what we typically think of when we think of normal.

Life is active. It is changing and adjusting and moving so as to stay afloat.

To challenge our norm, to allow for an ending, is a critical part of our lives here on Earth.

It just sucks to know that something is ending.

This is particularly difficult for me as a nurturer. From a very young age, I found friends who were in need of love. These kids were the loners at school or even victims of child abuse. As I grew up, I took on leadership roles that would allow me to meet these people where they were at. My family raised me to see Christ in everyone, even the most unkind people, so it was not a surprise that I wanted to love others with all I had.

If I was happy, then maybe I could share some of that with them.

I watched many beautiful people change their lives. Part of me wishes to say that I could give something to them, that it was my love that changed their lives, but that would be wrong. I did not tell them where to go to school, who to marry, or really do anything. All I ever did was be in their lives and love them for who they were in that moment.

This all may seem like the perfect Christian thing to do, and in many ways it is good to love others. However, I tied my pride to their success. My happiness was no longer my own, but rather it was associated with the changes I saw in the lives around me. I did not want to change my life because I was part of the lives that were becoming more and more influential.

I was important because those I served were important.

Imagine my heartache when those I loved most decided I was no longer worth their time.

The most impactful of these was high school best friend. After so many hardships and losses, he made it in to one of the best universities in the nation on a full-ride scholarship. He became a leader in our spiritual community, and he gave me credit for saving his faith in Jesus Christ. My entire senior class associated me with him, and I reveled in that experience. I loved on someone who once was considered the most hated member of our community, and now I was being praised with one of the most accepted members of our community.

But I didn’t love him the way he wanted to be loved. He wanted a romantic relationship, and he could not let go of the dream that we could be together. I never wanted to date this boy. I just wanted to remain important. So, two days or so before he left for college, he told me that I was boring and that I no longer mattered to him. 

After all this time, I thought that I would be the one to end our friendship. I had planned a gradual decrease in conversation as we molded in to our collegiate lives, one where he could move on without entirely losing my friendship. In a way, I was prolonging the ending period. 

I was trying to make the “December of our friendship” last longer than it ought to last, and I paid the price for it.

Dear Readers, when we choose to force an ending to stay with us, then we are not allowing life to change. We block the mechanisms to acheive “homeostasis” in our hearts. If anything, by trying to hold on to what we already have, we lose any chance to receive the many wonderful opportunities that we could have had long before.

Let’s go with a biological example: Cancer 

Cancer mechanisms are pathways that already exist in the body. Some of these are key parts of development. Others, especially metastatic mechanisms, are associated with wound healing. In fact, these mechanisms are critical, and if we get rid of them in mice, they die quickly. However, if we let these mechanisms run unchecked, we get cancer.

“There is an appointed time for everything and a time for every affair under the heavens” ~Ecclesiastes 3:1

It is easy to say that an ending is good and important and necessary when it comes to cancer, or letting go of an addiction, or graduating, or any physical thing. We can all accept that if something will help us in a tangible way that it is a good thing. Even if it is difficult, like going on a diet, we can say that it is good for us.

However, when an ending is associated with another person, then it is more difficult.

Whether we care to admit it or not, people will always be moving in and out of our lives. They will always be a part of our hearts, but they will not be in our midst every day. Children move out, but they will always love their parents. Students graduate, but they will always have their university on their resume.

We are all aware of the ending.

And there are two approaches to these endings.

The first is the more common approach: live as though the end is upon us now. In this method, we do not get too close. We hold on to the norm as we know it. Our students’ lives don’t matter so as to avoid caring too much when their grades drop. Our friend who we could very well have a romantic relationship with remains our friend so as to not screw up the relationship we know. Our coworkers are less important than their our work so as to avoid getting too attached before they leave.

We avoid the end, even though we know it will come some day.

But there is another way.

The second way to look at others is to see them for what they are: body and soul, both meant to be everlasting. Each human being was given a soul, and each person is going to enter in to eternity some day. Each person is meant to be in Heaven some day, and in fact, the Catholic Church has yet to say that anyone is in Hell.

“Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever” ~Philemon 1:15

Everyone will be together some day, should they choose that reality.

What if we looked at people as though they were a part of our forever?

It is so easy to start talking to someone with the awareness that the end is upon us. I remember meeting people in my final semester of college and thinking to myself that it would make little sense to grow to them. However, it was my decision to try to grow closer to them that allowed me to survive Cell Biology, and I still speak to those people today.

Dear Reader, when you encounter another human being, you are encountering another infinite being, a soul that you will some day share eternity with.

To know anyone is to have the opportunity to step out of time and in to God’s time, or Kairos, if you want to go greek about it. No matter the chronological time we have with this person, they will be a part of our eternity. God gives us people to taste Heaven.

If we choose to love those around us with all of our hearts, then we get to enter in to eternity, even for a little bit.

Do not be afraid to love with all of your hearts Dear Readers. Do not be afraid of the amount of measurable time you have with those around you. Do not be afraid to let your heart be broken, and let it break open to all that is to come. You have been blessed with so many infinities that your heart would burst should you understand the magnitude of that blessing.

To bring it back to the original point, the “Holiday Season” does not just remind us of the ending of the year.

This season, more traditionally refered to as Christmas Season, is the greatest reminder of all. This season, more traditionally known as Advent, is a time where we are reminded of the coming of Jesus Christ in to this world. We know the story of His coming to be one of us so that He may give His life for us.

Jesus’ birth reminds us that God came so that we could be with Him forever in Heaven. To rephrase my favorite Bible verse a tad…Perhaps Jesus was away from Heaven for a while so that He could be with God forever, so that we could be with God forever.

More importantly, this time of Advent reminds us that no matter how small our lives may seem, no matter how little time we seem to have with others, that there is always going to be a future. God takes our little lives and makes them greater than we could ever imagine. It does not matter what the time is here on Earth, whether it be a semester or 33 years, our lives can change.

So let us take chances. Let us fall in love. Let us let go of the lives that must move forward.

But let us never forget that people will always be with us and that we should be grateful for whatever time we may spend with them. Let us never forget that the risk of heartache should never impede us from sharing the gift of love.

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” ~John Green, The Fault in Our Stars