blog.optimuschoice.com “Beautifully Dead. Wonderfully Alive.”

3. March 2010 by BruceSmith.

Beautifully Dead.  Wonderfully Alive.  A Story that might have happened.

Spiritual Autopsies, the series continued.

The coroner entered the room.  This cadaver, dressed in white, somehow seemed strangely beautiful, almost alive, yet, dead, and yet again, maybe not.  He had never encountered such deadly beauty before.  What was it about this one that was eating at him so?  He looked, he thought, he looked again, he could not take his eyes away.  There was something missing from this story, but he was not sure just what exactly.  She lay there.  Clearly dead, or at least dying, maybe dying to be alive?  It seemed as though she were telling a story and crying out to live at the same time.  Beautiful.  Deadly.  Dead.  Beautiful.  But how?  What would he put on the report?

As he reached for his investigative tools he was struck with a thought.  Its the eyes!  No, its the face.  No its the expression.  Hoping to pull his eyes away, he was suddenly taken in, and the story came to him, almost as if she were telling it herself.

In her eyes, which had not fully closed, the coroner saw glorious pools, deep, brooding, intoxicating, sorrowful, yet bright.  They told part of the story.  In those eyes, like he had rarely seen before, and had at once seen many times over, he found a tragic tale.  The eyes were telling him of how she came to die.  The death she spoke of, however, was clearly more than her recent demise.  This was a death which began a long long time ago.  

As he looked deeper in her eyes with his penlight he began to see it vividly.  This glorious specimen had been hurt long ago, as a child even.  The death began long ago.  The traces of her tears were still evident well behind the veil of death covering over those lovely pools.  The eyes were telling this coroner of the rejection, beatings, confusion, pain, anger, resentment, self-protection, and longing.  It was all clearly there.

After investigating the eyes, it was the mouth which caught him next.  The mouth, pursed open as if beginning to scream, yet reflecting an attempted discipline to hold something back.  He noticed the lips still had color.  They were ravishing, and nearly made him touch them.  He licked his own lips as he thought how they must have tasted when fully alive.  He was taken aback when he noticed they had been altered.  Tragic he thought, “they are so perfect”.  He reached out to touch them again, and it struck him, part of this beauty’s death was her insecurity and longing to be seen.  He began to cry, but caught himself, remembering he was a professional.

The eyes had told him part of the story, the lips had revealed another part of the drama, but it was the position of her head which struck him like a boulder rolling down the side of a mountain slope careening into a car unexpectedly.  Her eyes, fixed toward him, were positioned so softly and timidly, while the head was slightly turned away as if trying to escape the scene.  She was hiding, and yet hoping, all together in one movement.  What was she hiding from he thought?  What was she hoping for?  So much was untold here.  Then it happened.  In a moment, as he pulled the sheet back and revealed her hands, the picture unfolded in a wave of truth and overwhelming revelation.  The hands told the rest of the story.  Her left hand and the right.  They each portrayed a different side of her, and they both told the truth.  Her right hand was clinched so tightly the nails were burrowing into her flesh.  The right was still fighting, still holding on to something, many things.  She was going to the grave with this fight, this much was clear.  But the left hand. Oh, what a different story this hand was telling.  Supple, soft, gentle, and at the beginning of a movement upward.  It looked as if this hand was starting its submissive offering to the heavens.  The left was trying to undo the fight on the other side.  The left was attempting to allow the pains swimming within those beautiful brown pools to escape once and for all.  The left hand clearly wanted to let the pains go.  Had there been more time, perhaps, the left hand may have proved strong enough to actually save her, he thought.  

As the coroner took all of this in, his soft cry became a violent sobbing battle.  Her left hand could have been her way to redemption, he thought.  If only… he sobbed.  He was undone.  Never had he been so drawn, so captivated by his vocation.  Without thinking, he took her left hand, and he began to pray,

Oh, God!  Did this one have to die?!  She was, is, so beautiful.  Why?  Why? Why?  This one, so beautifully dead, yet so nearly alive, a hand away, she was so close.  I know she appears gone, I know its too late.  But, I am asking you, YOU, to make a way back for her.  Was the story of Lazarus real?!  Was it?  What about the woman at the well?  Did she really find life, and healing from her life of abuse, promiscuity, and pain? Did she?!  Well, if so, if those things really happened, and if you still change things, then change THIS!  

This is not fair!  She is a remarkable creature.  She died in a fight for her life.  I see it in her eyes, God.  She was lost in a prior life, and yet, moving toward a new one!  I ask you now, in the name of your Son, who raised Lazarus himself, raise this one.  Raise her now.  I am tired of seeing death win.  I am sick of it!  YOU take her left hand now, and lift her up.  DO IT!!  I SAID DO IT!  Please.

Oh, God, my Father.  I have seen you move in the lives of so many.  This one did not have to go.  I still see signs of life there.  Don’t allow this gift of remarkable beauty to be stolen.  The enemy has stolen too many already.  Raise her up, heal, restore, right here, right now, on this table, while I am standing here.  And when she gets up, make the fight be gone.  Make her right hand like her left.  Raise them both in sweet softness and in the strength of great joy toward you.  Then move them toward your purposes.  I don’t know why, God, but I am begging you to do this.  

I am believing that you will remove the fight in her which brought this beautiful life down.  I am believing that you will bring ever increasing light in those marvelous eyes, and that the brooding waters would yield once and for all to tenderness and mercy.  I am believing that glance would lose its shame and look life and love square in the eye with the strength of grace and relational peace.  And I am believing that those lips, those luminous lips, will soften ever more, will awaken, and will offer the world life and love that is sweeter than honey from the comb.  

At that moment, without even realizing it, the coroner leaned over her and threaded the fingers of his right hand through the fingers on her left, bent down softly, hovering over her and breathing deeply, and using his left hand forced open the fingers on her right.  He paused to look at the cuts in the palm of her right hand left there by her nails.  Having opened each finger and gently caressing each wound, he placed his left hand under her head, stroking her hair gently, and then raising her torso upward, he kissed her.  He kissed her.  

Losing consciousness, having never been caught up like this before, the coroner kissed her, and as he did he simply prayed again, “Bring life. New, beautiful, clean, restored, vibrant, joyous, tender, and true.  Just bring her life, the life she was beginning to reach for.”  He repeated this simple prayer for what seemed like hours, the tears never slowing.  And when he “awoke” from this place of longing, he awoke to find himself in the arms of a radiant woman, weeping along with him; her new dress, white and flowing, soiled with tears of joy.

Its just a story right?  But what if God is in the business of bringing us to life abundantly as the scriptures tell us.  Do we believe its real?  Does He still heal?  Does He involve Himself in our drama?  Does He use us?  Does He hear our prayers?  Does He sometimes grant us answers to those things we long for?  These are important questions for each of us to answer.

There are those around us everyday who need people to stand in the gap and bang on the doors of heaven for their sake.  Some of us need people as impassioned as the coroner in the story.  Some of us need to be the coroner in the story.  And some of us need to realize we are the ones in need of newness.  Maybe its not spiritual newness in terms of needing salvation.  But perhaps its newness of understanding into our past, how it affects our present.  Or perhaps we need newness in our desires, our relating patterns, our personalities, our social life, our thought life, our motivations.  Sometimes, the death which the enemy of our souls sends our way is allowed in and allowed to take up space all too easily.  Left alone, ignored, or not taken seriously, the death trap of the enemy can over take us.  

Wherever it may be in us or in those around us, may we allow ourselves to see the full picture, and passionately pursue life and healing in every case.  And may we, like the coroner in the story above, “wake up” to the reality of overwhelming joy.

Grace and Peace,

Bruce Smith 

optimuslife.org

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