hello earthling. part one.

From a very young age, I have always feared death. The following is a look at the intimate conversation I have been having with myself in the last twenty-two-and-a-half years and that I continue to have today.


When I was about eight years old, my father and I were driving to Beaumont for a baseball tournament. As an imaginative child, long trips (over 20 minutes) were rarely boring because, while I looked dazed or even half alive staring out a window, my mind was buzzing. A million thoughts a minute, always. Sometimes it was about the mundane or sometimes really imaginative, fun daydreams. But this day was overcast. I was a scrawny, gangly girl, with brown curly hair matted down by my baseball cap. I remember staring out the window looking out at Leduc's industrial city limits, and staring blankly at a car dealership that we passed. In that moment I had a thought:

I wonder if I'm real. There must be more to life than this. What if this is all just a dream and I can't wake up?

For the thirteen or so years since then, I have had unnerving moments, typically in the morning, where I will wake up and go to the washroom, stare into the mirror and say to myself:

You're name is Ferin. This really must be a dream because THAT is a strange name. You cannot possibly die because this is a dream....

This was usually followed by panic:

BUT what if it's NOT a dream? What if I really am Ferin? What if this really is my average life? What if I actually die?!?

At this point, my heart is racing and I tell myself that I am losing my mind, and unless I want to confess my slightly disturbing thoughts to the world and get thrown in Ponoka (for those of you who aren't Albertans, Ponoka has a pretty large and well-known mental institution. A common insult for third graders was to say that you, your mom, or someone else relatively important to you was in Ponoka, or at least about to go there).

Needless to say (which may I just thrown in here, is a really stupid phrase? If anything were "needless to say", it just would not be said, right?), I grew up feeling like a pretty bad Christian. I do not think the church is bad, nor do I want to cast it in a dark light, because I think it is a very necessary part of this world, and as a Christian, I believe it is essential to our faith, but when I was growing up within the church, if there was one thing I seemed to pick up between Sunday School, sermons, hymns, and the like, was that:

CHRISTIANS SHOULD NOT FEAR DEATH.

On the contrary, we should be quite happy about it. Anticipate it with some kind of uncanny excitement. Songs like "I'll Fly Away" spoke of this life being so weary and bleak, that Christians ultimate hope was found in death (which begged the questions: did Jesus really rise from the dead to give us hope in death?).

Heaven became the ultimate destination. We would dream about heaven! My mom would ask me what we would want to see in heaven and what we hoped wasn't there. If you ask many Christians they might tell you that they hope that [insert favorite sport or past time] will be there; or some claim that they won't really care because it will just be enough to be in God's presence; others hope to see their family and friends (although my youth pastor said we would love everyone equally and we wouldn't really remember our close family and friends from this life). I confess I used to dream of this, speculating on whether or not slurpees would be in heaven, or if I would be allowed to play somewhat violent video games (which I concluded: probably not), and I thought of how sad I would be if my dad didn't make it into heaven.

I cried a lot when I was a kid. Actually....I cry a lot now. I am a wimp, so even stubbing my toe hard enough or my boyfriend giving me a charlie-horse will cause me to well up. Sometimes I burst into tears watching movies (such as Forrest Gump or Milk). Most of the time, my tears come from my thoughts. Sometimes despairing; sometimes happy; sometimes hopeful; sometimes angry.

Heaven was one of the things I cried about.

Death was one of the things I cried about.

And I grew up my whole life feeling like a bad Christian because I didn't really want to go to heaven, I was not excited enough about it. I would get moments, you know, the really good moments in life where you want to revel in them forever (holding my baby brother for the first time, laughing uncontrollably with Nolan until we were about to burst, a cold slurpee on a hot day, a really good book, walking through autumn leaves in a hooded sweatshirt, catching a fish and battling trying to bring it in, walking my dog, being held by Mike and feeling really safe...) and I would cry because I would miss it when I died.

But I SHOULDN'T MISS IT! Because heaven was going to be a million times better RIGHT?!?

Well typically I would just brush it off with one such thought as above, but as I started to search for truth to hold onto, I decided that this unresolved issue did not have to go unresolved for me.

I went to Bible College (not solely for this reason alone, but I found a lot of truth there!); I began reading books; I began thinking on it a lot harder; I began talking to professors, friends, co-workers about death.

One of the most important things I have been learning at Bible College is how practical God is, and how practical the Christian faith is. Not to say that we will figure out everything in this life, because our human comprehension is limited and fallen, but I started hearing from everywhere that maybe heaven is not where we are destined for

....maybe Jesus overcame death not for us to look forward to it

....maybe we were really destined for earth.

to be continued in "hello earthling. part two"