Death is the ultimate loss of control.

I go from being alive, active, persuasive, attractive, wise, influential, charismatic to being passive, inarticulate, frightening to look at, confused, of no account, and pathetic.

How I see my life determines how I see the death to which you call me. It is a death in which I embrace the very thing of which I am most afraid: inability to control situations so that people can reject and revile me.

That is the death, the desert through which I must pass in order to enter the kingdom as the beloved son of the Father and brother of Jesus.

I wish there were some other way.