Jesus & Wonderland

I wonder if Jesus would sit with the caterpillar and try the hookah or get the cheshire cat to break out in uncontrollable laughter. Actually my title is meant to contrast how Jesus turns things on their head so much as we follow Him in the Gospels. His statement that you must lose yourself in order to find yourself is the one that really has hit home inside me. A total paradox in which you do the very thing you least want to do in order to recieve the thing you most want. In the musical play Jesus Christ Superstar, Jesus sings a song right after His entrance to Jerusalem on the donkey with all the people singing hosanna. Jesus sings, *Neither you simon nor the 50,000, nor the romans nor the jews, nor the priests nor the 12 nor the scribes, nor poor doomed jersualem itself, understand what power is, understand what glory is, understand at all. To conquer death you only have to die, you only have to die*

The words are so crucial to me in that they hit upon our deepest existential struggle which is knowing one day we will die. This has been, as i have spoken of so often on here, my biggest bugaboo, and for varying reasons. Death symbolizes all thats bad to me, it has even with all i have learned about how it was overcome and is really only a life transition now. I saw my dad and touched him as he lay in his casket. He was stiff and cold. He was gone forever. I hated death for doing that, and i hate it still, but in doing so i feel I have been its slave because i have always felt it was after me. Part of me just cannot understand the part of me which has this obsessive compulsion with death. I cannot in all honesty think about any time where i have not had the notion of death happening in some way or another, and how do you LIVE like that???

That is another piece of my puzzle. Have I used death as a shield to avoid the pain and risk involved in living??? I mean i have accomplished alot of things over my 48 years, but then I feel like I have not accomplished anything because this fear-obsession has always been with me. Not to mention bringing God into the mix. I have sought to live a committed life to God & Jesus since i was 16. Many ups ands downs along the way of course. I had my atheist roommate in college say i was the best example of a christian he had ever seen. I wondered if somehow i had a clone i didnt know about!!! lol I still am blown away he said that because i was always just myself around him. Never tried to convert him, just shared life as a roommate. How does someone who is seen by an atheist as best example of a christian struggle with fearing death??? How does this person struggle with living life and all its pain and risk it holds??? Wish i knew all the answers. I feel like i have always been 2 people as far as who i am with others and who i am inside myself. I treat everyone, or try to , with love grace humor and compassion. Myself- I beat myself up for any and every flaw and mistake and sin whatever it may be. No matter how many times i tried this inner judge never lets me go and always holds my fear against me. The worst of it is, I have declared myself and sought to show myself as a true workman for Jesus, flaws and all, yet this inner judge keeps me on the hook and says my fear makes it all a sham and i just better hope somehow,someway I can stay alive cuz death will be the worst. This is my bare-all struggle, the hope that God and Jesus know my faith and hope despite all this somewhere inside me, even a smidgeon. Thank you all who read this. Any comments always valued and wanted.