The Choice to Live and Die

I felt as if death was slapping me in the face as I encountered two grim situations one day apart. This is medical nursing, and I guess I've had quite an initiation to it on day 1 and day 2. Yesterday handed me the opportunity to not only witness, but participate in my first code. Recently diagnosed with metastatic cancer, she did not survive. We repeated the resuscitation process three times to bring her to some sort of vague stability, but we could have kept on doing that over and over - a strong heart at age 48 - she would have kept coming back. But what would her quality of life be? Who knew how much brain damage was ocurring as her heart rate dropped to 28 and her O2 saturation to 75% repeatedly? Newly diagnosed, her family had no time to discuss end of life directives, so she remained a full code. But did her family really want to sustain her 'life' on a ventilator? Thankfully, in the moment of rushed trauma when time is a blur, the daughter decided to stop... And then again today, just after break, I found a patient I helped to feed just moments ago had breathed his last. Packing up his body to bring him to the morgue, I pondered about what the substance of life is. How is it that moments ago, I was talking with him, responding to his requests for apple juice, checking that his IV was infusing well, asking if he was in pain - and then, in the next moment he was gone. That which was so much alive in one moment, was gone the next. What is it that is the substance of life? What gives and makes life, and takes it away? The breath of God, yes, but what is that substance? It doesn't have tangible substance. The body before me lay empty.

'THE LORD GOD FORMED THE MAN FROM THE DUST OF THE GROUND AND BREATHED INTO HIS NOSTRILS THE BREATH OF LIFE, AND THE MAN BECAME A LIVING BEING' genesis 2:7

Yes, it is God that gives and takes life. But just as God displays his sovereignty, we also have choice. This morning as I tended to him to get him washed up for the day, he asked if his daughter was there yet. I told him she wasn't and asked if he expected her. He said he did. When I was off the ward, his daughter came and sat with him... He breathed his last breaths only moments after. It seemed as if he held on, waiting until she arrived before he left. There are countless stories similar to this, where a loved one has 'held on' until there is a sense of peace and release over the dying one... A daughter exceedingly gives her time and energy to care for her father, and she hasn't yet settled in her heart that he is dying. When she arrives to this point, she speaks these words to him: 'I release you...' And he dies just a few days following...

What?! This seems so unreal! I guess I've always thought of the nature of our God given will in the context of our lives and the choices we make - God is sovereign, but He has given us choice as well. It's new to me to think of death as a life experience. It is a life experience, even of our earthly lives. The examples above show us how, to a certain extent, we have choice in our death. But isn't this true even beyond the examples from above, outside the context of someone with a failing body? Don't we make a choice about the timing of our death if we continually put ourselves in threatening situations, drive recklessly, or refuse treatments for a curable cancer? I think of it as God's blanket of sovereignty that covers our choices both in life and in death. In the end, He still has the last say. After all, what did I conclude before? It is GOD that gives and takes life; He breathes and relinquishes life. I consider how this choice in death relates to my life, and the choices I have made. I know that proceeding with the call I believe God has given me puts me at greater risk of harm, and potentially death at a sooner point in time than if I were to stay in North America. But if this is the purpose God has for me, and I turn the other way toward safety and comfort, then am I really living?

My head hurts from all this thinking. :)