And in the End, Love

What End?

The end spoken of here is the end in the sense of purpose and consequence. Whether in the now or in the future, what is the end toward which our lives are going, whether by the end of the hour, the day, the year, or the life? What is the fruit of our lives? What is the effect of our lives? What is the outcome of the purpose we have given to our lives? What end are we moving toward?
All these things go into the making of the persons we become. In the end, we will be the persons we have been predetermined to be by the combination of these things that are active in our lives. Some are at work because of who we already are as persons by DNA, and some will be the consequence of decisions we make, or fail to make, about our own lives. In the end, we will be what we are becoming. Here’s a story that illustrates this.
Ed was a young man in his early twenties. He was almost finished with university, and all had gone fairly well. Ed was a casual, likable guy who had a good idea of where he wanted to go in life. He knew he had mathematical skills, and he loved to think precisely about things. Engineering suited him perfectly, and this was confirmed in his grades. He had also been accepted into a large engineering firm when he graduated, so he knew exactly where he was going in the immediate future.
Ed came from a family that had no religious beliefs, and thus he never had any upbringing related to the church. His understanding of religious things was minimal and limited to what he had learned in school in courses of comparative religion. He knew no one among his circle of friends who had deep religious faith and therefore had no real religious influence in his life. Thus it was that religious considerations found no place in Ed’s thinking about the kind of person he wanted to be.
Ed had never experienced any serious problems in life, medically, socially, or academically. His was a contented life marked by freedom from trauma or grief. None of his family members had died, so he had never been confronted by the death of a loved one. He had never had to experience failure or radical change in his life due to loss of income or a job.
Ed had a girlfriend he had met in school. It couldn’t be described as a deep love affair; neither of them saw marriage as part of their relationship or future. But they enjoyed each other’s company, and this level of relationship was just fine for each of them.
In terms of the development of Ed’s character, the ingredients at play were: a loving and comfortable home and upbringing; a recognition of skills that he put to use in his education; a future that appeared secure in work that he liked; and a disposition that could be described as content and that had not yet experienced grief or trauma in life. His ideas of what a person should be were that one should be a good person, likeable, well adjusted, and using his talents as best possible. He wanted to be diligent in his endeavors and progress in his chosen career. He hadn’t given much thought at this point to marriage or a family, nor to how he wished to raise his children. Absent too from his thought was any real consideration of meaning in life or why he existed at all. Life, for Ed, just happened.
Let’s now fast forward ten years in Ed’s life and get a glimpse of what his life has become and where he is going as a person.
Ed was married now and had two young children. He had met his wife, Shelley, at a friend’s party one night, and the two hit it off immediately. They began to date, and within two years, they had married. It was a civil marriage attended by a few friends and family members. Each of them had a career that was progressing very well. Ed was now a senior engineer in the same firm, and Shelley was a dietician at the local hospital. She, too, had had no religious upbringing and like Ed, had never had a need to question the purpose of life or its meaning. Like Ed, life for her had always just happened. The two of them continued to approach life in this vein each day.
Ed was content, happy with his wife, and happy with their children, Amy and Ryan. If asked how he was doing, he would answer, “Very well indeed; life doesn’t get better than this.” His disposition was a constant, his goals in life the same. He was a good person, likeable, well adjusted, diligent, and using his talents as best possible, and so was Shelley. From his point of view, there was no need for God, for deeper questioning about life, or for concern for the future.
This all changed within the space of one year. Both of Ed’s parents died that year, and Shelley’s father died as well. Amy had a life-threatening illness that hospitalized her in intensive care for over a month. Ed, for the first time in his life, experienced grief at the loss of his parents. For the first time in his life, he experienced the trauma of the near death of a child. And in addition to this, neither Ed nor Shelley was completely able to help the other with their grief or worry.
One night Ed said to Shelley, “What if Amy had died? Would her life have meant anything? What about my parents? They just lived and died. They didn’t believe in anything beyond the day. Each of them died without ever attaching any significance to their existence. Did their lives mean anything? I don’t know what to make of all that has happened in the past year. I realize that in all my life, I’ve never really thought about these things. Surely, Shelley, there must be some meaning to people’s lives. Surely we can’t just live and die and that’s it. I think of Amy, and the thought that her life would have no significance just doesn’t make any sense to me. This has really been troubling me lately, and I have to try to find some answers.”
Shelley replied, “I have to say, it’s troubled me too. But I wasn’t thinking in terms of the significance of Amy’s life or that of our parents. I was thinking of it in terms of my love for her. If she had died, there would have been a huge hole in my heart, and I don’t know what I would have done. I asked myself how people ever get over the death of a child. I just can’t imagine it. I would have been angry about it and frustrated that I couldn’t do anything. I would have been angry at the injustice of it. Why should a little girl die? It doesn’t seem right to me. And if there were a God, why would God allow these kinds of things to happen? Those are the kinds of thoughts and feelings I’ve had. It makes me mad that we almost lost her.”
Afterward, Ed thought about their conversation. Is that all I’d do—feel angry? What would that solve? It wouldn’t bring her back. It wouldn’t answer my questions. It would just leave me angry, without a way of dealing with the issue itself. I wouldn’t know what significance Amy’s life had or that of each of my parents. That’s no good. I can’t simply leave it that way. I need some answers.