When I Die...Let me Stay

Funerals draw me back to the reality of my life.

It will end.

Soon or late.

Today or tomorrow.

One day I will leave this earth and step into the next.

My final struggle with transition and separation.

I want to be one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers.  

• To laugh, tease in contempt (Mock)
•  To be a scoffer: someone who jeers or mocks or treats something with contempt or calls out in derision
• To not be authentic or real, but without the intention to deceive. (Wordnetweb)
• To be inflated (Blue Letter Bible)

More then anything, I want to delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on His law day and night.

• To not step to the right or to the left.  
• To not be distracted and exhausted by the cares of this world.  
• To not doubt or be tossed to and fro.

 

I long to be a tree planted by streams of water who will yield your fruit in season, my leaves will not whither; whatever I do will prosper.  (Psalm 1 Heather's Interpretation) 

• To Be
• To stay and wrap my roots in Him

I yearn to be a planting of the Lord and to  stand as a wind break in storm and shade in the heat.  

A respite, "and provide for those who grieve in Zion-- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor." (Is. 61)

Oh God, may my roots to be found IN Christ and my hope in You.  

Holy Spirit be the veins of life and energy producing fruit and eternal results through me.

May I stand strong for my husband and my children and my grandchildren to lean on.  May I stand along the way for friends and family to lean against.

Compost for them to be flourish in.

And when I die, let my death give hope and not grief.   Strength and not weariness.  

 Joy and not mourning. 

Love and not hate.  Forgiveness and not bitterness.  Celebration and not grieving. 

  

I want to be like an Ironwood tree.  Hardened.  Believing God will use all of my life in His time.

 As the ironwood tree I saw in the desert in Arizona; a nurse tree.  Ironwood trunks can persist for 1600 years and a community grows in its shelter.

All it does is BE. God created it to be.

God created me to be.

 

The ecological importance of the ironwood tree comes largely through the roles it plays for over 500 other species in the Sonoran Desert (Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum 2000). Ironwood trees function as a habitat-modifying keystone species, that is, a species that exhibits strong influences on the distribution and abundance of associated species (Mills et al. 1993). A chain of influences generated by ironwoods on associated understory plants affects their dispersal, germination, establishment, and rates of growth as well as reproduction. These ecological dynamics are termed “nurse plant ecology.” Other large trees co-occur with ironwoods along washes, but ironwoods may be the only tall branching woody plants on the valley floors or bajada slopes (Vander Wall 1980). Their relative influence on plant and wildlife diversity is proportionally greater in plains and rocky slope habitats above ephemeral and intermittent watercourses. Along watercourses, ironwood is but one of many nurse plants available"