Perhaps a little morbid of me, but I have been thinking a lot about death lately. I am a Christian, and I believe in life after death. I believe in eternal life with God after death. But there's still a part of me that wonders if life isn't just a cosmic joke. A part of me that fears that black oblivion of death.

I think sleep is a good thing, but there are other things that I would prefer to do. I sleep because if I don't I am tired and I don't function well. The reason why I write this is because I think of death sometimes like sleep. If there is life after death (which I believe and choose to believe in), then death is just a long nap. But if for some reason death is the end, then it's a really scary thought that there's no waking up from that dark cloud of nothingness.

My problem is that I am a worrier. I am pathological about it, actually. I am so bad about it, I memorized most of the scriptures that deal with worrying. It's like in that movie Inventing the Abbots. If I don't have something to worry about, I create something to worry about.

I think my fears about death stem from that worrying curse I have. Also from my overwhelming fear of being insignificant. It's tied into my fears of failure. If I fail then I have no reason to be here. If I have no reason to be here, then life is meaningless, and death is just the ultimate failure.

Morbid thoughts, I know. I am praying over this and most of the time I don't let it bother me. I remember when I was a kid and I saw this program on the sun where they said it would burn out in billions of years and the world would die. Believe it or not, I couldn't sleep after that. I was so scared, when logically speaking, I'll be dead in far far far far less than one billion years. My fear was about it ending, everything that I know and mostly love, if not tolerate.

I have been feeling somewhat poetic lately (I am a terrible poet, by the way). But I composed a poem that deals with my fears of the black oblivion. I will post it, but I give the caveat that I am not gifted in the poetic arts. Here it is.


Death

I am not over death yet.
Even with all my beliefs in eternal life
I am still plagued with doubts and fears
Wondering about the sleep that may not ever end.
Wondering about the black emptiness
The lack of everything
No longer thinking, feeling, touching, tasting, hearing.... anything.
Is it the beginning of the end, or the end that never begins?
What a conundrum life is for those who believe, who fight to keep hoping.
It's a joy, but it's pain in that isn't it easier to just give in,
Just think that life is some joke that was made up by a random chain of events.
Yet the other part of me, know that my life rests in careful, benevolent hands.
Hands that have created based on a master plan.
It's so intricate my mind cannot take it in
It's greater than the greatest of thoughts.
Maybe that's why we sleep, to prepare us for the sleep that will come when this world ends
And the next one begins.
I choose to believe, and believe I do
Except in the darkest of nights when the fears creep past the shield of faith around my heart
Wrap me in your arms Great Creator, Father, Friend, Counselor, Comforter.
Rock me to sleep, for I know that this short sleep will seem long compared to that last sleep
Before I wake up in your presence