"I honestly thought I was going to die..."

I've never claimed, I don't think, to be sane all of the time, but I'm much more often coldly logical than I am anything else. Sunday, however, I had quite a bout of irrationality. And yet - I was thinking more clearly than ever.

To paint you a story, I've been working overnights, and Friday night after work (at 8am) I spent a few hours outside. When I got home I immediately started suffering from the worst allergy symptoms I've ever had. I got very little sleep that day because of them, worked again that night, and was up until 3:22pm (i'll explain) the following day.

I was still feeling terrible and had just taken some Benadryl* to go with the Allegra I had taken that morning. I was not doing well physically or emotionally. As I laid down to sleep for what I was hoping would be a good 10 hours, my throat constricted just a little bit (a little swollen and sore) and I had a sudden fear that it would close completely during my drug-induced coma and I would suffocate and die while I was sleeping. And that no one would think to check on me due to my abnormal sleep schedule.

Now, this wasn't just your run of the mill, random, crazy thought - I honestly thought I was going to die. My mind started racing through the people in my life, and how they would be affected. When was the last time I called my Mom? What about that friend living out of town whose phone call from last week I hadn't yet returned? What about my fiance of only four days? Could I calculate her devastation? My mind whirred and spun.

What was my life about? Last year when I started calculating the days since my birth at 10,000 - would this Sunday, my 10,359th day, be my final one? The unseen counter that was not counting up from birth but down till my future death - was that really at a mere 359 that day I started counting up from 10,000?

And I was scared. I was scared to die. And that surprised me because I know in whom I have believed and where my true citizenship lies.

I was being irrational, but I also saw things so clearly. I saw what was truly important in life. How do you really know what you would think about if you were dying - unless you really thought you were dying? What a strange blessing. What a significant revelation.

And what did it turn out was important to me in those moments? Relationships. People.

And I saw with clarity just how tragic life really is. It was all very startling. I even wrote an "if you wake up" note on my whiteboard, with a time signature: 3:22pm. I wrote it to try to remind myself that Christ deserved every moment of my life if I woke up, because he would be the ultimate and only reason I would be graced with more days to live. And I wrote it to communicate what I knew so clearly at that moment to whoever would go through my things and read if after I died.

I did sleep for 14 hours. . . but I woke up.
Praise God, I woke up.

Unfortunately I'm back to my usual self. I don't have that clear picture of what's important. My time and mental energy are being used to make sure my food is tasty, my mind is entertained, and my life is comfortable. My urgency in relationships is gone. Ultimately, I'm wishing that I could be irrational once again so that I could once again think clearly about the important things - the things that will endure forever.

Thanks for reading.


*It was actually a double dose of Children's Benadryl, but who's keeping track.