Flirted With You All My Life

For most Christmas is a happy time of the year.  It's the time of the year where we actively remember when Jesus came to the earth as an innocent babe to save our souls.  Everybody seems to come together, be merry, celebrate, and give gifts.

It should be a happy time of the year, right?

I've been having a very hard time of it this year, and I finally figured out why.  I'm waiting for the boot to drop.  What do I mean?  Looking back in my life December has been one of my hardest months every year.

In 2005 I was rushed to the hospital at 3am Christmas morning.  I was in really bad shape, the doctors said that my life was in serious jeopardy.  The cancer almost claimed my life.

In 2006 I lost my good friend, and example, Ryan Shuman to cancer.  I still wear his braccelet as a reminder to the life he lived.  It would be two short months later that I'd lose Laura Jahnke to cancer as well.

In 2008 I was suffering from serious, deep, dark depression and almost took my life.

This year has been full of lots of thinking and lots of memories.  I recently found a musician who wrote music that tugs at my soul.  His name is Vic Chestnutt.  He has quite a story.  When he was a young man he was in a car accident and became a paraplegic.  He couldn't feel anything below his waist, and could barely move his hands.

Yet he didn't let that keep him down.  Vic Chestnutt became an amazing song writer - his songs were performed by REM, Widespread Panic, Billy Bob Thorton, and others.  He also had a musical career of his own, proving that one could overcome their limits.

One of the last song that Vic wrote was called "Flirted With You All My Life."  In this song Vic tells the story of a love song.  This is not your average love song, however.  This is a song about a man who has courted death, who wants death to come, but has been rejected.  In an interview Chestnutt said that he had tried suicide a couple of times before, but that it just hadn't took.  Listen to the song - there is a beauty in its sadness.

Christmas Day, 2009 Vic Chestnutt took his life.

I find myself drawn to Vic's music, and his story.  I listen to Flirted With You All My Life and am taken back to the days of my depression in 2008.  It's not a bad thing, I've moved beyond the depression and suicidal thoughts that I had.  Mostly I look back on the choices I made that led me to the deep hole.  I now know how easy it is to think that taking your life is the only way out, and I give God thanks every day that he gave me strength to say no to the seductive call of death.

It's Christmas.  I hear people say all the time "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" and "Put CHRIST back in CHRISTmas."  Okay, sound nice.  But what are they talking about?  What does that look like?

I think Vic shows us exactly what it looks like.  I think his song is what life is like without Christ.  We spend our lives flirting with Death until Death wins and whatever afterlife awaits us ensues and we are judged for our sins.  Not a pleasant love story.

Christ changes that.  With Christ, I think Vic's song becomes a break-up song with death.  Because Christ kissed death we no longer have to.  Christ has taken the sting out of Death by dying for us, even though we don't deserve it.

I can close my eyes and picture a scene where we're dancing with Death.  He has a smile on his face because he knows that he is about to win our soul.  Then Christ taps Death on his shoulder and says "May I cut in?"  The smile on Death's face drops as he knows that he's lost this love story.  Because of Christ we can now break up with Death.  Isn't it sweet?

Truly that is what Christmas is about - Christ cutting in on our dance with Death.  Have you let Christ cut in yet?