31st Birthday Reflection Part 2: Alive at 31

I was pretty absorbed into the thought of death at 19.  I believed it so much so, that for me, it was a certainty.  How many times can one be jumped on by people and not die?  How many times can there be shooting around you, and you not think you'll get hit by a stray bullet.  I was actually sitting on a porch with my cousin and a guy on a bicycle pulled a gun out and started shooting at the porch!  I figured that something evil was really out to get me and would eventually succeed.  My mom couldn't even trust me with money because I got robbed so much!

So, you would think when I found Jesus that this thought process would heal right?  Not really.  See, I gave my life over to God in a Wendy's outside of the Robert Taylor Homes (more like prison buildings).  I'll have to tell you my salvation story another time, because its kinda wild!  Anyways, when I started following God, my worldview about my death hadn't changed, my view on my destination however did. So, I thought that when I die, I'd go to heaven! It was great for a moment.  Dying didn't seem so bad when I would look at death in this light.  Then, I became intrigued by heaven and how things would end.  So I would read the book of revelation EVERYDAY!  I WAS OBSESSED WITH THE BOOK OF REVELATION!  I just wanted to know how things would end! The drama, the battles, the victory, the finality, it was really satisfying for me.  I would then go around and tell people about this book, "Hey, have you read this book?  It's CRAZY!  Are you a Christian?  Yeah?  Well, guess what, WE WIN!!!"

I laugh thinking about myself at the age, just a little boy, voice cracking, tasting something for the first time really feels like hope.  What was funny, was when I turned 20!  I was a sophomore in college at this time and I as REALLY depressed.  Freshman year I put on the usually 35 - 50 lbs going from 185 to 230 in college!  My sophomore year however, I was so depressed at the idea of dying that I stopped eating much, and I had dropped down to 199 (can't wait to see that weight again!).  I remember sitting in my room with all the lights off wondering when it would happen.  I figured it would most likely happen when I would go home.  "It's been good Jesus," I would say.  "Thank you for the bonus time."  

For some crazy reason, I said yes to a missions trip that summer in Los Angeles.  I thought, "Well if I don't die, then I'll go a missions trip and die a martyr!  The book of revelation had some good stuff to say about martyrs..."  It's so funny thinking back about this time of life for me.  Well, I went back home after that college year, and you know what?  I didin't die?  Crazy!!!

I remember turning 20 on the mission field and I kid you not, I distinctly heard God say to me, "Don't you know that I have more plans for you than you can imagine?"  That hit me at the heart.  I've never thought that God might have plans for me, or that His plans could supersede my fatalism.  I was stunned.  I had been living a sham made out of conjecture and fear.  What would life be like without the fear of death looming always?

Today's my birthday...I'm 31 years old.  It means a lot to me, not that I'm older, or that many people could see me as young, but that I'd lived a great deal of my life an EMOTIONAL TERMINAL ILLNESS, and God healed me.  God proved himself to my life the best way for my circumstances, by proving me wrong about my death.  The demise of Tony Gatewood was greatly exaggerated by yours truly, Tony Gatewood.  

Right now my wife is asleep, my daughter tucked away in her room.  I still rock her in my arms even though she's a bit lanky and older.  I wanna keep doing it until I can't.  She'll live out birthdays prayerfully without the same sickness I once had.  I can feel tears in my eyes, is it my 31st birthday, or 12 years of being proved wrong.  I can't really tell right now...