It's the dying day.

All week I have been fighting my head for space to settle into the dying.  We are constantly told that the fading is escapable.  Avoidable.  Fixable?  And then this day rolls around each year while the earth remakes the dead pieces of itself and the enormity of rebirth through death is grounding.  Spring: one of God's greatest sermons.

I'm saved on dying day.

I'm saved on dying days.

We're desperate to live longer, better lives, advised to absolutely take care.  If we carve out space for ourselves, if we put the right things in and on our bodies, reprioritize, follow dreams then-- life.  But when I spend time with The Book and The Author, I cannot escape the beauty of the dying woven into its pages.  Because while the world is dizzily bellowing Live!, Jesus whispers from the cross, Come this way and die.  Take up your cross, crawl onto the altar, forsake your home, your people, and follow Me.  

I first felt the honor in the dying when I was preparing to marry, when I was shedding parts of myself that didn't fit with him and grasped, for brief seconds at a time, the sweet bitterness lurking deep inside self sacrifice.  And in those first years, it seemed He was constantly calling me back onto the altar, constantly killing off the bad fruit, gently stripping my pride, my lies, my idolatry of self.  And oh, I died so many, many times only to have to die again.

Of course, I am still dying.

This is the gospel: a perfect sacrifice redeemed a people who did not know they were walking around already dead and through a perfect death; perfect life.  We became a people marked by death, a people called to turn cheeks and to give, give, give, to hold loosely, to love largely, to look upward, even when the stones are hurled and the crowds are mocking and the ground itself doesn't hold.  We are an upside down kingdom of last placers and humility seekers and quiet dwellers and when we aren't it is because there are still parts of us that have dying to do.

Jesus loved me in the clearest, most tangible way when He died and I love the people He has given me best when I die to them.  This is what Easter is: Jesus patiently grasping both my stubborn shoulders and giving them a shake.  Wake up and die, Tasha.  Give it up and die, Tasha.  Love Me well and die.  Love him well and your son well and your community well by putting them before you, above you, over you.  And die.

Because Dying Day always leads to Resurrection Day.