What could SHE know about Death?

So, I said in my post yesterday that this week I will be focussing on the concept of death. It's a fair question to ask: what exactly does a twenty-two year old, educated, lower-middle class, Caucasian girl eating cold soup on her lunch break know about death? 

The short answer is: not much, but more than I'd like. 

To my knowledge, no one in my family has been murdered or even mugged. By God's grace, no one has committed suicide or been killed in the war in the Middle East. 

Now, I don't want you to get the wrong impression of me. People have occasionally said that they think I'm "strong," whatever that means. And I have been using a rather authoritative, if pensive, tone this past week of blogging. But I don't want that to lead you to assume I have an immunity to the questions and doubts, the entropic and discursive pain of being a thinking and feeling human being. 

There was a very important question I asked a kind man five years ago. 
It had to do with death, our deaths in fact:

"Having been so low as to be willing to commit suicide, do you have a hard time drawing a line between 'dying-to-self' and self-hatred?" my seventeen year old voice sharp with forced sturdiness, curling up with the slightest shiver of fear. 

That question has not left me since its birth. I carried it into the woods, I carried it into relationships, I carried it into college, and across the graduation stage of my alma mater. 

The Almighty's thundering response to my whisper has been long-rumbling, as I learn more about what it means to be a creature, and obedient slave of the sovereign Lord of heaven. 

One of the few things in this life that I can say with full conviction and content is this: 
I was dead without Christ. 
It wasn't just a feeling; because there were definitely times I felt alive, fed, and enflamed. But the Spirit of God testified in my heart that there was no life in me.

"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience." (Ephesians 2:1-2 NASB) 

Did you catch that last bit? The sons of disobedience are dead.