I just re-read a comment I made on a blog a while back, and I thought I would post it here. It was in response to this blog by Steve on Stand to Reason's Blog site, a conservative christian apologetics group. He was writing in reference to this article in the LA Times by Anne Lamott, one of my favorite authors.
So this is what I wrote in response:
"I'm just glad no one offered me that pill," she said to me. I had stood beside her bed after her heart had stopped 3 times, with her body giving all the signs of impending death. We talked on the phone now. She was driving over to my house. The road I've walked alongside my dear friend has been a long one. It is full of voicemail messages from panicked family members telling me the "latest". In between the sad times, we laugh together and share life together. She knows that dealing with a terminal illness can mean days where you get to have pity parties, and that most people are pretty unwilling to sit in them with you.
I've dared to walk next to her, even when it's hard...and she knows that she can throw the pity party with me when needed.
I was 5 when my grandpa had the first 7 strokes over the next 12 years. He was paralyzed on his left side, and his speech was slurred. After a while, we all learned to understand him as if it was a new dialect of english. From that bed in their modest Burbank home he heard me sing my camp songs to him, he held new grand-babies, and he enjoyed meals around his table, where we'd all take turns feeding him. Now, many could argue (and have) that his "quality of life" was so diminished that it wasn't "worth it". I assume there were even days when he woke up and probably wondered why God had left him paralyzed for 10 years of his life, when he would be leaving this earth to dance in eternal paradise with His maker. He always smiled though, he even dictated poetry to my grandma, listened to his favorite preachers on tape and slept a lot. He lived life to the full, no matter what that full meant as his body deteriorated. You know what I've decided:
I don't know.
I don't have to know.
I don't get to know.
I don't know everything.
And that is okay.
I talked to my friend on the phone some more about this topic, of "friend-assisted suicide" and she said "yeah, I totally get the desparation. I've just always chosen to believe that I may not understand why I'm still here...but God must."
I appreciate Lamott's honesty and ability to articulate some of the gray-er areas of living...and to make that okay to talk about. In this case, I disagree with Lamott's position. I think it to be arrogant to tell God when "class" is over. It just doesn't work this way. I think God is disapointed when we take things into our own hands and value experience over truth.
The reality of modern medicine is that we do much to prevent death. What's interesting though, is that people still die. We haven't prevented death...and many times the unexplained happens and people leave this earth...no matter how many pills, surgeries and treatments we dope them up on. It's the mystery of life...and I am unwilling to think it is merciful to take that roll from God. It is His to "give and take away".
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