“Who do you know that is dying, like I am?” Her feet are a step or two away from leaving earth, and I’ve come to say goodbye. This is her hello to me. We aren’t wasting time, for she has no time left to waste. “Are there others our age that are almost done, like me?” Jill* is about my age. We go way back, about forty years’ worth. In our twenties, we married within a few years of each another. Since then, we’ve traversed decades of work and play, questions and faith, prayer and vacations, babies and toddlers, teens and college kids, weddings of now-grown children, celebrations and heartaches. Amid the floodwaters of my long-ago divorce, she and her husband, Peter*, one of my college classmates, waded in beside me. Six years ago, they celebrated the joy of my new marriage. We’ve cried and prayed over the years. We’ve laughed and talked over the miles between us. Now I walk with her, for a bit, to the end of her earthly road.

“Who do you know that is dying, like I am?” Well, truth be told, every single one of us. This is not home, this green-earth and blue-sky place. This is not permanent, these summers that bring forth lush peaches and winters that scatter dancing snow crystal white from heavy clouds. This is not home, these drought-drawn fields, these terroristic acts, these financial upheavals.

There will be a day, a place, when there will be a new heaven, a new earth, a new frame that we’ll trade up to for this old one. From the minute we are born, we are moving toward dying. We are all older now than we were just a minute ago: old and growing older.

We’ve brought lunch for these friends of my heart plus goodies to stock their kitchen for the next few days. She rolls herself along to the living room. Then, too weak to transition on her own, my grown son, who’s grown to love Jill and Peter, assists her from wheelchair to sofa. She is paper thin but stout of spirit, her mind and heart still alert and oriented. This couple speaks openly about her endings here yet keeps an eye on hope, praying still for a miracle to cure the cancer-ridden places. They’ve suspended treatments now as the battle winds down, choosing quality over quantity. Hospice is in place, knowing the end draws near, but still, hope is always present, even in endings.

We talk of old days and old friends. Robert, my husband, jumps into the conversation, asking about how they first met. Jill and Peter relive their courtship, full of laughter and the typical joking disagreements as to who said what to whom when. Then she stretches out on the sofa, exhausted, and drifts off for a bit.

My eyes mist over with sadness as we sit in on this closing earthly act. Yet they are ones who see the joy in the many blessings. They are giving thanks in all things. Even end things. Peter tells of a new local partnership, which will be good for them and their organic farm. They chuckle at their status as seasoned hippies who’ve long farmed and eaten well amid a new wave of health crazes. He talks of what he may do when she’s gone, and she nods. They’ve faced the future.

We chase the past a bit more, as we catch up over lunch, filling in one another on grown children and dear old friends. Peter eats every last crumb, while she barely touches her food. They speak of their lean and lanky son who has a new job. Their bright and bold daughter and son-in-law bought their first house. Simple, ordinary conversation, one foot shy of heaven. “Lane, you know, it’s good either way. I hate the leaving now, but I’m glad the kids are grown.

I just hate leaving them—the kids and Peter, he needs me—but really, if I’m healed, then it’s more time here. And if I’m not healed here, then it’s full healing there. But still. . . .” and now her eyes and mine both fill with hot tears. “You’ll keep an eye on him, won’t you? You’re good at keeping up with us. He’ll need that.”

“Of course, of course.”

We have a flight to catch and need to drop off my son at his house an hour down the road, and the time has come for goodbyes. We give hugs all around, and there are no dry eyes anywhere now. This is sacred and ache-filled, knowing I’ll probably not see Jill again until we are both fully whole and fully holy in residence in heaven.

The three of us climb into the car rattled and humbled by all of this. At first, my husband, son, and I sit in silence, for what words can catch our truest thoughts? Slowly, we unveil our aches, our hopes. We know we’ve been on holy ground. We pray aloud for healing, for good closing if healing is not to come here and now, while we wipe tears from our faces. We talk of the physical decay we see. We talk of the spiritual strength that amazes. These friends have lived well into Jesus, even in this shortened life situation, even in this time of letting earth go.

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01.  Life and Death in Christ

Teach us to number our days, aright that we might gain a heart of wisdom,” Psalm 90:121All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ says. At the base, when it comes to times like this, aren’t we really wondering: how might we live each day well, that we might come to that day when we will die well? As my friend said, “Who do you know that is dying, like I am?” To that we all answer, “Me. Like you, I am alive now but moving steadfastly to death and then to life again.”

We live in a culture that does all it can to focus on staying young, on being full of zest and aliveness. Yet, as those who follow Christ, death opens the door to being truly and fully alive, for it is then that we will be all that God intends us to be.

As I think on my friend’s final goodbye, I turn to my own future one—not as far away as it once was. How does my life with Christ impact my death? As preparation and research for this article, I interviewed spiritual directors, spiritual director supervisors, and spiritual directees of varying ages. I wanted to hear how fellowship with other Christ followers and the ministry of spiritual direction impacts the aging process.

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02.  The Role of Community

What I learned begins with community: All of us want to belong. We want to be known. We want to be loved. We need the encouragement of one another. In the Gospels, Jesus surrounded himself with disciples and others, such as Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Paul had Timothy, Tychicus, Epaphras, and Luke, to name a few. Leaders like Billy Graham gathered a surrounding team, as did writers like C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Jesus, in his John 17 prayer, prays for us to be one, to be known by how we love one another. He sets the stage for a life of togetherness, not just soliloquies.

The reality is that community isn’t an option. We are made to be with and for one another. Community connects us across generations, each generation growing and learning from the generations ahead and behind them. One directee, a former missionary, spoke of how this surrounding both challenged and encouraged her when the stresses of life in another culture seemed too harsh. Another directee noted that others raise the bar, pushing us beyond our comfort zone and keeping us astute to not settle into the culture’s expectations.

In our twenties and thirties, we are discovering who God has called us to be and, quite often, whom God has called us to go with through life. Whether single or married, in college or career, friends who walk with Jesus ask us questions to give us pause. Being vulnerable with one another, we ask: “Will this choice make me more or less like Jesus? Will this mature me? What is God growing in me in the middle of this decision place?” When illness, job loss, or grief comes knocking at the door, fellowship offers a place to remind us of our true identity in Christ, our true values as disciples. Fellowship includes bright green lights of growth and thumbs-up cheers. It may also include yellow flashing lights of caution, a compass-like reorienting when confusion of direction sets in, and halting red lights to stop and change gears and direction.

Fellowship comes in all shapes and sizes: the friend who runs with you every Saturday morning, the small group that gathers to pray when you have nothing left to say, the camaraderie that occurs when you serve others together, the digging into the Bible together to study and learn God’s perspective. Here we gather with others who help us discern our gifts and how we can offer those gifts for the good of the whole body of believers. These are the friends who show up for a congratulatory dinner and a consoling discussion. Such gatherings keep us from isolation, from being lured by the enemy, from forgetting who we are to God: his beloved one.

As we age, from childhood to full maturity, we need the care of one another. When I was a teenager, one Christ-loving couple intentionally created a home with an open-door policy. We knew the lights on meant, “Come on in.” Their basement housed Ping-Pong and pool tables and a refrigerator full of refreshments. More than that, they were around with a listening ear, a safe place for teenagers to be loved by two who loved Jesus. We didn’t have to go to their church; we were welcome, no matter what we believed. That kind of unconditional love, and behind-the-scenes prayer, carried many teens like me through the tumult of growing pains.

Later, with three children under three-and-a-half years old, an older couple with teenagers claimed my young family as part of their family. Adopted as part of something bigger than just our busting-at-the-seams family, Bonnie and Joe took us in, for Saturday afternoon picnics, for birthdays and holidays. Generous with their availability, they subtly showed us how to raise godly children.

Unexpectedly divorced and single again while raising three teenagers, my aching heart was cushioned by singles, young families, and older couples. Some had suffered losses of other kinds and understood some of my grief. Friends younger than me and friends older than me keep me alert to wise ways to live with the question, “How do you want to live up unto your death?” The stresses of each age can stimulate us to growth or to decay; the fellowship of Christ’s family carries us along. Vulnerability while doing life together keeps us willing to risk and kicks us out of our comfort zone. It is where we have space and presence to speak identity and truth to one another.

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03.  The Role of Spiritual Direction

Christ-centered spiritual direction involves a relationship of three: the Holy Spirit, a spiritual director, and the directee. All of this is focused on a heart filled with knowing Jesus for the directee who longs to become more insightful of heart, mind, soul, and strength while becoming more like Jesus. Here I can focus on discerning what God is up to in and for me in a fresh way.

I’m so close to my own life that I need the wise heart, eyes, and prayer of someone able to see and hear with God-focused clarity. My spiritual director notices themes and stuck places in my life, then prayerfully helps me unearth the nitty-gritty knottedness of my heart. Via spiritual direction, I see where I am stuck in the temporal. Such insight offers opportunities of new choices that lead me to worship at the feet of Jesus, worship that then transforms my heart.

As a spiritual director myself, I watch and wait with others who want to know their heart’s landscape and notice God’s presence in each moment. Directees approach aging, and all of life, differently for having been in a spiritual direction relationship where the Spirit directs. They begin to filter all of their experiences through the sieve of the Spirit. What is the Lord up to at this moment for me? How is this situation showing me more of my own heart? How am I seeing more of God’s heart in this experience?

As we age, like Paul notes in 2 Corinthians 4:16, we notice how our outer nature wastes away, while our inner nature is being renewed. The most obvious component of the aging process is the physical one: our bodies change, causing some capabilities to shift or diminish. As this happens to our earthly bodies, we groan for heaven (see 2 Corinthians 5:1–2, 5) and we begin to question meaning and purpose amid these changes. Yet in this same process, we can become more resilient as our spirit matures.

Spiritual direction gives us time and space to ponder how and where we are living fully present or vaguely absent to each moment. As we are also moving toward leaving behind, shaking off the effects of the fall to gain the eventual restoration of all things, as heaven becomes our dwelling place, we contemplate the meaning of each day. Here we examine all the times in our life that Ecclesiastes 3 speaks of: birth, death, planting, uprooting, killing, healing, tearing down, building up, weeping, laughing, mourning, dancing, scattering, gathering, embracing, refraining, searching, giving up, keeping, throwing away, tearing apart, mending, quiet, dialogue, loving, hating, war, and peace. We walk with God and a spiritual director to see how God has knit us together in our mother’s womb (see Psalm 139:13) and how God knew from the beginning what he was up to for each day we are given. Here we hold these moments in our hands and examine them, like a gold miner searches for treasure among the ordinary dirt and stones.

Spiritual direction is a prayerful relationship that allows deep questions to arise and be safely considered. It provides a focused place to move like Jesus. It’s an attentive space to our own heart and to the heart of God. Some spiritual directors and spiritual directees describe the process and benefits of spiritual direction like this:

 

• Maturation towards God occurs as I’m challenged in places of growth and resistance.
• Seeing clearly what God is up to allows me to focus on what God is growing within me in every life circumstance.
• My false self is dismantled.
• I come to terms here with my mortality.
• I learn I am not in control.
• God is who he says he is. Will I trust him?
• I address life either through anxiety’s lens or through contemplation’s lens.
• I am safe here to struggle with my faith, with my questions.
• It’s not about my intellect; it’s about my heart.
• I become more attentive to the activity of the Holy Spirit.
• I become more attuned to heaven.
• It’s about who I am becoming as one who follows Christ.
• It moves me from thinking I know it all to realizing it’s all about Jesus.
• It shows me the holes in my holiness.
• I notice how my aging body is impacting my longing for heaven.
• I notice places where I want more healing within.
• As I age, I see places forgiveness—or lack thereof—heals or keeps me stuck.

 

By living in close fellowship with other Christ followers and by entering into a spiritual direction relationship, we walk through all the ages of our days, numbering them aright to gain a heart of wisdom (see Psalm 90:12). Through intimacy with the Lord and interaction with the family of God, we begin to integrate all that we are into a life aged well that we might come to that day when we will die well.