Advance to Casket- Collect Plants From Around the House

One thing that I appreciate about my childhood is that my sister and I were encouraged to play. During our free time, we would play games such as Cootie, Candyland, Mouse Trap, and Mall Madness. We tried to play Monopoly with my dad, but he always cleaned us out and made us cry; which I now realize was a very interesting way to teach us how to lose gracefully. As we walked down our yellow brick road of toys, we could choose from Barbies and Ponies and Popples-Oh my! We would build forts in the living room with sheets and blankets, create a Wish-World-Kids hotel out of our blocks, and pretend that our stuffed-animals were children at a day care and we were their teachers. Most everything we played, as children, would be considered normal- except for one: we played "funeral."


Since we were savvy on what went into creating a complete funeral, my sister and I decided to gather all of the plants from around the house and place them around our glass-top coffee table. Then, one of us would be the deceased, who laid under the coffee table with her arms crossed over her chest, eyes closed, and, for some reason, tongue sticking out (I don't know where we came up with that feature, but it was how we portrayed someone in a casket). Whichever one of the two of us was not playing the deceased would stand near the casket and cry.  To us, this was normal. It wasn't until we tried to play funeral at the babysitter's house that we realized not every child knew how to play. 


My mom received a phone call from Mrs. Anderson, who asked if playing funeral was something we did on a regular basis. My mom assured her that this was normal play at our house.  I could only imagine what Mrs. Anderson must have thought as she watched two young girls show her son how to properly look dead.


As morbid as it may sound, I love that my sister and I engaged in this type of play. It seems that if guns and weapon-like toys are acceptable for boys, they should understand that their pretend gun fights could result in a pretend funeral. So many little girls play house and wedding, which may or may not be a part of their future, while neglecting to practice for the most inevitable and final event of their existence. Yes, it could be morbid, but could also be a lighthearted way to accept a circumstance that many people fear the most. 


In his book, The Pilgrimage, Paulo Coelho describes a series of exercises that he went through to become a warrior-like human. In one exercise, he imagined himself dead. He laid on the ground, closed his eyes, and imagined what his children and wife would say at his funeral, as he was in his casket unable to answer them.  He imagined no longer feeling things like wind, rain, or air swopping in and out of his lungs. He imagined no longer smelling a flower or enjoying the taste of food.  He realized how much of the little things in life he had taken for granted.


Upon completion of the exercise, he arose to the feeling of the wind, the breath in his lungs, and the smell of the forest. He then ate his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and marveled at the flavor, claiming that it is the best food he has ever tasted.


Pretending to be dead and playing funeral isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could establish an acceptance for what will happen, or it could remind one to appreciate the beauty of the little things that we tend to take for granted.  

Forever Young and Fearless

Every minute, every second, every moment makes us older and older.  There is a stigma of fear that circles in our minds, taunting us with its evil horns and pitchfork, mocking our gray hair, wrinkles, and decreased metabolism. We live in a time when people go to great lengths to look and feel younger while discouraging the inevitable "growing old."  It seems that with our increasing creases and deteriorating bones, we increase our fear and deteriorate all we have bouned.  What is it about growing older that we fear? Is it that we are afraid to die or is it that, with age, we learn more about the world and we long for the fearless freedom that comes from a childhood innocence? 

When I was a child, I couldn't wait to grow up. I anxiously anticipated the time when I could have more choices and privileges.  I couldn't wait to be twelve, so that I could babysit. I couldn't wait to be sixteen, so that I could drive. I couldn't wait to be twenty-one, so that I could legally go to bars and clubs with my older friends. Right before I turned thirty, I had a little bit of a crisis, as I didn't think that I accomplished some of the things that I expected to accomplish and experience before this time in my life. 

Now that I have crossed the thirty-threshold,  I can honestly say that I would not change a thing about my life. Looking back, I have realized that, with the exception of having children by now, the experiences that I have had have far succeeded what I expected my life to entail. The only thing that I can attribute to why I have experienced all that I have, is a fearless attitude about what I was capable of accomplishing. 


My Grammy taught me that I should not dwell on the past, but that I also should not close the door to it. I have loved learning about her past, as she has been open to share it with me. Learning about her past has inspired me to look at my own. Looking back, I feel blessed to have memories that remind me of what I am capable of doing, when I live in fearless freedom. 

At seventeen, my passion for swing dancing and my boredom after school got together and put the idea in my head to find a ballroom that would let me teach a class once a week.  After I found the Diamond Ballroom and persuaded them to let me teach a class on Wednesday nights, I created flyers and placed them in the windows of stores all over the city of Loma Linda.  I also told some friends at school, and they spread the news like wildfire. During the first class, there were people from around town and many fellow students from school that wanted to learn how to swing dance. As a young entrepreneur, who made dancers out of Seventh-day Adventist students, I was a fearless rebel with a cause. Because of the overwhelming response that made swing dancing the popular thing to do, I was inspired to write my college preparatory English paper on the reasons why SDAs should be encouraged to dance. Due to that essay and a really great audition, my class was the first class to have a choreographed dance during Class Night and LLA.  How many seventeen year-olds do you know who make trends instead of conforming to them?

At nineteen, I started working at Glamour Shots as a photographer. I still have no idea why I was given that responsibility at such a young age. But, again, being fearless during the interview probably helped my employer believe that I was capable of doing the job. I put my all into making sure that people loved the way they looked in pictures. I remember a woman, whose husband was peeking through the privacy curtain during her photo shoot. He was smiling from ear to ear as he watched his wife. I asked him how long they had been married. He said that they had been married for 52 years, and had known each other for 52 years and a week, since they were married a week after meeting. He ended our conversation by telling me that she looked just as beautiful as she did the day he met her. I told him that I thought she was beautiful, as well, and that I was so honored to be photographing such a special lady. Even though they looked older on the outside, they had the spark of a young couple in love, on the inside. Needless to say, both of them were very happy with how her pictures turned out. But, more than just taking nice pictures, I think it was my personable attitude that made me successful in that business. I wasn't worried about making money; I was genuinely excited to go to work. Being that I had nothing to lose, I took risks by trying poses and angles that weren't necessarily in the photographer's manual.  People seemed to be happy with their photos. After a couple months, I was the top photographer in California, based on the sales that resulted from the photos that I took.

Shortly after I turned twenty-one, I became the youngest member of the cast of Joey and Maria's Comedy Italian Wedding.  I did not have a fear of what others thought of me, so I was able to perform in front of and interact with strangers in the audience.  For four years, I enjoyed spending my Saturday nights acting, dancing, singing, and improvising with a bunch of crazy people who shared my uninhibited nature.

At twenty-six, I was able to write, direct, and produce a play/dance show Time Warp. When the Performing Arts director of PHS asked me if I wanted to teach a dance class, I was so excited to be able to create and produce my own shows. It had been something was at the core of my desires since I was a child. I never thought that I would be able to accomplish that dream.  My heart is content when I think that, before I even turned thirty, that dream came true. 

When I began my teaching career, I was just as fearless. I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing, so I made decisions based on what I knew worked for me, in school. My students were very responsive, and I enjoyed what I was doing.

Then, there came a time when the very wily judgement emerged its head, and I accepted it as my friend. I didn't look at my students for what they were capable of doing; I focused on what I needed to fix. Looking back, I am ashamed to admit that I actually became upset about my students' inadequacies. It was inconvenient for me to change what I had planned in order to cater to their needs. I started having a bad attitude about my job.  A seed of a bitter attitude towards teaching was planted and was watered by other teachers, who shared my bad attitude. It took being rooted out of that garden to help me analyze what had happened to my fearless passion for teaching.

For the past three or so years, I have lived in a bubble of fear; fear of being judged by others, fear of my husband leaving me if I gave too much to my work or if I left him alone for too long, fear of conforming to the principles with which I disagree for the sake of being comfortable and secure, fear of not having children, and fear of getting older and not having life go the way that I expected.

God has blessed me with a year of reflection to identify, analyze, and confront these fears. I am beginning to get back to my childlike freedom of being fearless; not as an innocent or ignorant  individual, but in the face of understanding and accepting that I cannot control people, places, and things. As a woman, whom I consider to be very wise, told me, the only thing that I am in charge of controlling is my attitude. 

To me, the ability to let go of controlling the world around me, while taking accountability for my attitude and actions, is the biggest sign that my soul is growing older.  This does not scare me anymore.

This past weekend, I watched the movie The Guardian. One of the characters, Maggie McGlone, a woman very confident in growing older, inspired me to live in order to look forward to future wrinkles, bad knees, backaches, and even death. After the main character, Ben, asked "when the heck did we get so old?" she responded, " Hell, I've always been old, Ben. Ya' know what though, I don't mind. I mean if my muscles ache, it's because I've used 'em. It's hard for me to walk up them steps now, its 'cuz I walked up 'em every night to lay next to a man who loved me. I got a few wrinkles here and there, but I've laid under thousands of skies with sunny days... I lived and I loved, danced, sang, sweat and screwed my way thorough a pretty damn good life if you ask me. Getting old ain't bad, Ben. Getting old... that's earned." 

I love that I can honestly say that, at this moment, I feel accomplished in my life. All of the things that I have not experienced don't have a negative hold on me, like they used to. Sometimes it takes reflecting on the past to remind us of the positive memories and to learn how to make better choices in the future.   

Although I might slip back into the circle of fear, I am confident that I will be able to live better than I have in the recent past. Things might not always go the way that I expect them to, but I can't control that. I can control how I react to the circumstances that come my way every minute, every second, and every moment that I continue to grow older. Due to this, I have learned that it is possible to maintain a childlike fearless freedom while embracing the beautiful things that come from growing old.  

Defending Your Life

"Being from Earth, as you are, and using as little of your brain as you do, your life has pretty much been devoted to dealing with fear. Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything - real feelings, true happiness, real joy. They can't get through that fog. But you lift it, and buddy, you're in for the ride of your life."
- Bob Diamond


Does fear keep us from truly living?


When I was young, I had an overwhelming fear of being in the dark. I was always afraid that I would see a ghost. There are times when that feeling creeps up on me, still today. The source of this fear is still undetectable.  It could be a result of knowing about and seeing death around me at a very young age.


My mom has told a funny story about something I said while in line at the grocery store.  As the woman in front of us was placing her items on the conveyer belt, she heard the most peculiar thing coming from the mouth of a little girl in the cart behind her. 


"Mommy, are we going to go visit daddy at the mortuary?" I said.


A look of heartbroken compassion was transferred from the eyes of that woman to my mom's, as she offered her condolences. My mom had to chuckle a little as she explained to the woman that her husband, my father, is a funeral director.


I spent a lot of time at the mortuary.  My sister and I would play under and on top of the pool table in the staff lounge and would play "car wash" with our happy meal Hotwheels and the shoe shiner. For the most part, we had fun. But, there was always the possibility of seeing what was behind the big door at the end of the room.


My dad was very careful to make sure that we didn't see any of the bodies that laid motionless on the gurneys.  However, there were occasions when business couldn't stop to protect the eyes of a child. So, I grew up knowing that death was very real.


The combination of being around death and being raised as a Christian has helped guide me to ask myself deeper questions about what happens to a soul after it dies.


Do we rest until Jesus comes?


Then what?


Are we held accountable for what we have done, thought, and felt here, on Earth?


What if every moment of our lives was recorded?


What if everything we do in public and in private would be used to help us defend our place in eternity, after we die?


After watching the movie, Defending Your Life, I was haunted by these questions.  In the movie, the main character, Daniel Miller, dies in a car crash and ends up in "Judgment City." During his second day in the city, he meets his defense attorney, Bob Diamond, and begins his judgment process. During the trial, all present (two judges, the prosecuting and defense lawyers, and Daniel) view moments of his life as evidence to prove whether he is ready for the next "phase" or if he needs to go back.


When I saw this movie, even as a twelve year-old, I couldn't help but contemplate the similarities and differences between the ideas presented in this movie and what I had learned in the Bible.


Even though not many people like to think about it on a daily basis, it is inevitable that we will all die. Many people, even Christians that I know, live their entire lives either in denial or in fear of death. But, statements in the Bible provide hope for those who believe.


While we are here on earth, we can "walk in the shadow of the valley of death" and "fear no evil" (Psalm 23:4).


Really, anything we fear becomes our antagonist. What would it be like to live each moment without fear? Could we possibly sin if we didn't fear?


In the end, it is our fear that stops us from living to our full potential. "For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power" (1 Corinthians 15:56).  We can either fear the law, or live in love and naturally abide by it. 


What would our day look like if we tried to live in order to love to our best potential?  What kind of things would we be proud to look at if we had to watch ourselves at our judgment?


Through the movie and through the many times I have seen a lifeless shell in a casket, I have learned that death is inevitable, but living well and conquering fear is a choice.