Living Posthumously

Our lives are lived posthumously. The only truly fresh moment is when we emerge from the womb. Every other breath we take after the first one, every event that happens comes after that first moment of life. With every new chapter of our lives we are writing pieces of our eulogies. Our words are eulogies, laments of lost times, sonnets for lives that have passed.

We learn to walk, talk, think, and dress ourselves after birth. We make choices, mistakes, hate our bodies, our hair, and fall in and out of love after the skinned knees of childhood. We take our steps from our parents’ home into independence and freedom after the hormonal storm of puberty dies down. Our pasts, our memories, are things of beauty. They are unique and special, for they are the foundations of who we are today.

We write our own eulogies on the hearts and minds of everyone with whom we come in contact. They will remember every hug, every word spoken in kindness, every helping hand we offered. They will also remember our words spoken in anger, our cold shoulders when we turned away.

True faith is lived posthumously. We find it, and develop it after we die to self. We have to let go of our need for control, our desires and plans, and be reborn as the children God intended us to be. After our chosen paths come to an end, we quit marching along with arms swinging and legs pumping, and reach up for God’s hand. After our rebellions end, we find grace for the moment, for every moment of the rest of our lives. Living posthumously in faith, with grace, enables the crafting of beautiful, moving eulogies that will make us, and God, proud.