If You Want To Bloom, First Die

It happened in the spring, when all the world was a flame with its blooming.

The dying of me.

It was a chilly day in April, when the blossoms were blowing full, that I walked into school a girl of sixteen, and the world began to reel and spin.  There are times that a life can completely lose its compass. 

And I don’t remember how I got there, how the ripping away began, but that day I ended up face down, undone in my sobbing mire in the guidance counselors office and I didn’t get up again for hours. 

It’s strange how a life can rip apart at the bloody seams.

I was junior class vice-president, I was planning prom only weeks away, I was a straight A student who failing trigonometry.  All the pressures of  nasty teenage politics, a teenage relationship gone so very wrong, student activities board, sports that I played; that day the pressures of perfect overwhelmed, and I found that I was far from it.  Oh so far from perfect.

By fall I would be in rehab for the eating disorder that had begun to eat me alive.

By fall my downward spiral would be more of a dying, choking, gasp, a last cry of desperation. 

By fall the darkness would almost have swallowed me whole.

But she prayed.

That guidance counselor, Mrs. Tussing, she told me later how she prayed.  How she and my friend’s mom prayed for me, and my friends Deb and Rach, they prayed too, and they loved me, imperfect and all.  I was scary they said, but that didn’t stop their love.  And when I missed six weeks of senior year to go to rehab, they were they only ones who called, who wrote, who came to see me. 

They just loved me.  Loved me when I wasn’t nice, when I wasn’t pretty, when I was a failing, flailing mess.  And I hung on to that thread of hope.  To that shaft of light I saw coming from their lives, and I wanted it, more than anything else, to walk in the light they knew, to know the kind of joy they radiated.

To understand the Jesus they talked about. 

It didn’t make sense to me.  I had grown up in church, and it had all seemed like a bunch of rules for how to look good and be good and by now I knew that I was far from good.  And rules, I couldn’t keep rules, I only failed at that.  And I was tired of trying to be good, of trying to look good, because good could only be kept up for so long.  And so I said that I was done with God. 

But the God they talked about was different.  They talked about Jesus like they knew Him.  Like a friend, like He was real.  Like he loved them.  Like he loved me.  Even in my mess.  How could he?  Doesn’t he know what I’ve done and what I’ve been, and how could be love me?  They said that He died on that cross because He already knew I couldn’t keep all the rules, He died to pay for my failures, He died to be perfect in my place because I could never be.  And all I had to do was believe.  Believe that He did it for me, that He loved me even in all my imperfection.  Confess my sin, my need for Him and trust in Him for eternal life. 

Yes.  Who can resist that kind of love?  How can you not want to surrender yourself to One who has been so good to you, who has given you what you could never deserve or earn?  One who has been perfect for you because you could never be.

And all these years later, it’s still the blooming that reminds me of the dying.

Because it is only in the death of self that we can finally receive Life.  Only when we come to the end of us, can we embrace the Life that Jesus died to give us.  We all must come to the place of laying down our lives to take hold of the only Life that really matters, Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Why do I forget that it is the surrender that leads to life?  And this way to blooming is only reached first though the dying of self.  What have I even given that was worth more than what I’ve gained?  Why would I hold on to that which perishes when I can have that which will last forever?

And in His life the blooming never ends.