“Are you already dead?”

That is a heck of a question to get asked. Pretty easy to answer though. At least I think it is.

Earlier that day I had finally been able to accomplish something I hadn’t done before. Walk Aubrey to class. Maybe I should say I “rolled” her to classroom.

The wheelchair is no small gift. The thing is fast, slim, comfortable, and most of all gives a new degree of independence I didn’t realize how badly I was missing. So when I rolled into Aubrey’s kindergarten class, the typical questions I expected ensued.

“Why are you in that thing” - kid one.

“Because his leg is broke, duh!” - kid two.

“Nope, he has a DISEASE!” - Aubrey announced proudly. “It is a Motor Neuron Disease!”

Honestly, adults give me blank stares when I explain that. You can imagine the lost looks from this curious group of five-year-olds.

“Have a great day!” I announced as I rolled out of her class. I couldn’t have been prouder to take her into school finally. I knew there would be questions and after seeing her response just then, I no longer worried. She had it down and understood it was as much of a reality as a five-year-old can know.

So, as I’m asked the question by one of her friends later that day, I couldn’t help but admire her friend’s directness. “Are you already dead?” She asked it as innocently as could be. The curiousness of a child who is just searching for the truth.

It’s no secret that I love cycling. A hobby I was able to enjoy for a total of almost a year after discovering. Thinking back, that is one of the times I felt most “alive.” This was the opposite of her question. Being at mile 48 and feeling my legs burn climbing the last big hill before my house gave me a rush. Anyone who has ever fallen in love with exercise and what it does for your mind can probably relate. There are many great things in this life but for some reason when I think of feeling most alive that moment would top the list. Simple, fun, healthy, and straightforward.

But lets be honest here. I can get that same burning feeling and tiredness in my legs just by walking from my room to the fridge sans the euphoric feeling of the cardio workout. Just not the same for whatever reason. In fact, I will most likely not be on a bike again in this life. Wow! Did I become all negative? No. This vein of thought always takes me down the same train of memories that causes me to evaluate the current state of my existence once again.

I was from a school of thought that there are very few things that can’t be controlled if not cured with giving your body all it needs to succeed. The right balance of exercise and diet can do wonders. Ironically, I found early on that my formerly active lifestyle was not helpful to my current problem. The more I would be active, the longer I would be down and out for the count. It got to where a walk would put me out for several days. During the slow and drawn out diagnostic process, I wondered in my journal to myself if I was dying. I remember laying in bed, mind awake, muscles exhausted from nothing more than a typical day, wondering what was going on. I just couldn’t move them. Even when I had the manual wheelchair for a while, I would have to plan my energy as to when I could go to the restroom and get a glass of water on the way back, so I didn’t waste more energy than I had to. Examining your mortality in your young adult years will do all sorts of strange things to your psyche. You will be forced to answer some fascinating questions you would have otherwise been allowed to procrastinate. Am I dying was just one of them. Is my family going to be ok if something happens to me? What have I not done that is important for me to complete? How about this one; What do I really believe? Well, that question is easy right? If you’ve given your life to Jesus, you trust in Jesus. If you have never been sure, you will find that it is hard to believe because you are so unsure! You can put that one off for another day to digest because bills, relationships, kids, and life itself will pull you away from addressing that idea. Except when you face the question of “Am I dying” or better yet, “Am I already dead?” At this point, you have to address the issue.

The truth is, if you haven’t had a healthy vein of thought about your mortality, it is hard to address these critical beliefs. As one of my exceptionally brilliant friends explained to me one day over waffles, everything we do is predicated on some belief we hold. For example, he ordered bacon because he believed it would taste delicious. I mistakenly ordered turkey bacon because I thought it was healthy and would taste yummy. I was wrong on at least one of those accounts. We teach our children not to do certain things because we believe that will help keep them safe. We go to work because we believe we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves and our families. The thing is, many times people will say we believe in Jesus, we believe in the heaven he talks about in the scripture, and we believe in the promise of life after death with him. But what happens when that may be coming sooner than you think? How firm is your belief? For myself, at the time a Sunday school teacher, I thought it was pretty solid. But sometimes thoughts are just thoughts. I’m not saying I didn’t believe by any means. The last year of watching my body slow down as I lay in bed with the only thing seeming to work at times being my mind has rewired these beliefs into convictions.

My friend was telling me one day about him and his wife with their new daughter. They lived just 2-3 minutes from Braum’s, a delicious ice cream place in our area. With no family nearby and perpetually early bedtime for their daughter, they found themselves craving ice cream. Their daughter asleep, they explained to me they considered just going on a quick there and back ice cream date. It would only be 10 minutes at most. They knew that she would be safe. Now before you get too excited, these are both excellent parents, and no, they didn’t leave their daughter asleep while they went to get ice cream together. He said that while they knew that she would be safe when it came time to head out, they weren’t convicted that she would be 100% safe. The feeling was not in their heart.

I guess that is where the question Aubrey’s friend asked had led me. “Are you already dead?” Such a complicated question. Geesh child. Couldn’t you just ask where we keep the cookies? The smart-aleck in me wanted to say, “No but my body’s working on it!” Thankfully, in my heart, I knew the answer to this question. Much farther from perfection or adequacy in my mind, I decided to let Jesus be in charge of my life’s direction a while back. However, the issue of life after death was honestly not close to the mind at the time. It was more of a concept. Having the time to think about this question gave me the chance to wonder about the passage many of us hear at funerals. Jesus was comforting his disciples when he told them,

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

‭‭John‬ ‭14:1-3‬ ‭NASB‬‬. Bible.com

He was talking about Heaven and how He would be leaving them soon. I asked myself, “Am I dying.” “Does death scare me?” Nope. I am convicted that the Jesus who said those words, and who Himself was killed and still came back to life, has given all who follow Him a promise for something beyond this current world and body.

That is a conviction I cling to hourly. There is something far more significant and far more lasting than what we have here. It’s harder to see when what we have here isn’t that bad. It’s almost like the curse of contentment. When my body was in excellent physical shape, the only way I was going to die early was if a “bubba-mobile,” the giant Ford F-350 Dually with a lift kit and high schooler on his phone texting type truck, hit me on one of the country roads. I did not think of these questions then. Not deeply anyways. But when Aubrey’s friend asked me if I was “already dead,” my thought was no, but we are all headed there anyways and whether sooner or later, I’m not the least bit worried.

I smiled at her and still in a bit of shock, decided to buy a little bit of time to see the best way to answer her.

“I’m sorry, what was that question? I couldn’t hear very well.”

Clearing her throat, she improved her enunciation and restated the deep question I thought she had just asked. “Are you Aubrey’s Dad?”

“… Why yes! Yes, I am.” That one didn’t require deep thought.