goodbye, hello.

So, today is my 20th birthday. The door has swiftly closed to my teen years, and I’m a wee bit sentimental about it. Okay, for those of you who know me well, I’m a lot a bit sentimental about it. I’ve spent the past few days gazing back into my past—back to when I was excited to be turning “double digits”—and it has reminded me of how sweet it was to be a child and how daunting it is to move forward into independence and adulthood.

In order to put my stream of thoughts into perspective for you, I need to let you in on an event that added a certain weight to the end of my childhood years: the death of my sweet dog and best friend, Ezekiel Junior Collins. 

In his last months, Zeke had face cancer, and it spread pretty rapidly, but as always, he was joyful and humble through his pain. He never complained or drew attention to his condition, but smiled and loved well through his season of hurt. In fact, his joyful spirit was one of the hardest factors in the process of putting him down. Now, I’ll get to that later, but before I do I want to map out the color that Zeke vividly added to the Collins clan throughout his 14 years. This is the story of Zeke:

As kids, my brothers and I (maybe with the exception of Andrew…he’s never been into the whole animal thing) pleaded with our parents for a puppy. Through persistant annoyance and potentially striking the correct cord inside my dog-loving father, they finally blessed us with a beautiful and silly black lab on Christmas morning, 2000. I will never forget how that morning they had us open a few gifts before going downstairs, and upon opening them, we realized that dog treats and chew toys were not really of use to us. We pieced together the information at hand, and raced downstairs to find the first dog crate we’d ever seen in our home with the most precious, loving animal inside. Little did we know, this dog would become so much more than that to our family: he was a fifth sibling, a friend. Throughout the years I used many a nickname to affectionately describe my 100 lb. black ball of sunshine. Some of which include: fatso, biggie fry, zeker, big guy, fatty, and my personal favorite, sweet boy. The latter is my favorite due to the true nature of its claim. Zeke was there for me in the midst of loneliness and depression, in the throes of doubt and self-hatred, and in the times of celebration and excitement. He was there for all of them. I can’t tell you how familiar the posture of my arms hurled around him as my tears saturated his coat is to me. It’s a hug that I will surely miss. Thankfully, I’m aware that God placed him so intentionally in our family to shower us with joy when we were void of it. Oh, how successfully he fulfilled that purpose. Even toward the end, he brought us joy tenfold. 

 This past Wednesday, July 2nd, at 8:30 AM, sweet Zeke left us. As my Dad, Mom, and I sat in the waiting room (quite ironically ‘waiting’ for the death of a part of our family) at the vet saying bye to Zeke for the last time, I could only lay there with my arms hurled around him—gripping him firmly—with tears streaming down my face and onto his patchy coat of old age. In his last moments, I shared with him the posture that I am so thankful for. The posture that brought me so much encouragement and joy throughout my childhood. The posture from which I will remember Zeke the most. In the vulnerability of my childhood, he was there with joy. I’ll never forget that about him. My sweet, sweet boy. In that same posture, I felt his muscles turn to jello and saw his eyes glaze over while the vet whispered, “he’s gone”, and for the last time I wept on top of my childhood best friend.

Zeke is gone and so are my childhood years. To me, this is a ponderous realization. With all of this collapsing on me in one week, I had a lot to process. Essentially, I was contemplating the slamming of the door to my childhood that I addressed earlier, and one thing I realized is that there is so much pain that comes with the end of things. I believe firmly that the end of Zeke’s life (and my childhood along with it) are painful and difficult to grasp due to the fact that we—as humans—were never intended to experience the end of anything. God made us as eternal beings to whom death was foreign. It wasn’t until the disobedience in the garden that death even existed. Death is a punishment—the ultimate punishment of sin—thus it is not supposed to be swallowed smoothly. It’s natural for death and conclusion to trickle through our minds like an uncomfortable poison due to its nature as a foreign substance. 

Romans 6:23 validates this truth, but also reminds us of why moving forward past the end of things can be hopeful and joyful. It says:

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I know and trust that in the midst of grief—no matter how big or how small—that I have eternity with my Savior to strive towards. That is enough to keep me moving forward; it’s more than enough to turn my eyes from the past toward the eternal future. Because of this truth, I have been able to be thankful for my childhood, which I can look back on with rosy thoughts. My childhood, my family, and my home have been a tremendous blessing in my life that I praise the Lord for in my retrospection. 

But this truth has also eased my fear of the future—my fear of change. I know that my ultimate promise of eternity is in the hands of a promise keeper. One day I will face the punishment of my sin in a physical sense—earthly death—but I will never face the punishment of eternal death because Jesus took on the wrath of God for me. I have a rosy future ahead of me as well, and there is so much joy in that. 

From here on out I will strive to seek Jesus and him alone for the comfort I need in the midst of great change, and I will do it with a similar posture that I approached Zeke with. I will hurl my arms around my sweet, sweet Savior and weep on him as he provides me with joy and truth. Christ is my ultimate Savior and my ability to find joy in him will never depart from me like Zeke did. Death has no grip on Jesus.

Throughout the rest of my years of life, I will desire what David expressed in Psalm 27:4.

"One thing I ask from the Lord,

    this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

    all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord

    and to seek him in his temple.”

This is my prayer: “to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and seek his temple”. This is the only hope and excitement that I have in moving on, in growing up.