Where are you asking for resuscitation and where is God inviting you into resurrection?

We’ve been having some really tough, meaningful conversations in our family lately about how we’d want things handled medically if the worst were to happen. I’m not exactly sure when I grew up enough to be included in such matters, but here we are…

Some family members expressed they want a DNR order – do not resuscitate – while others expressed a desire for extensive measures to be taken in the face of a crisis. Heavy stuff.

It got me thinking about the difference between two words that get used pretty interchangeably: resuscitate (and if you think I don’t need spellcheck to correct this word every single time, you’re dead wrong) and resurrect.

Brought back into the state it was before vs raised into a new kind of life.

One is when something gets shocked or brought back into the state it was before.

The other is when something is raised from the dead into a new kind of life.

Jesus didn’t die, and then get resuscitated. He died, and was resurrected, right?

Resurrection is not God breathing life back into what was. It’s God bringing forth life on the other side of death in a way that is altogether new. New life.

Not a little jolt of breath back into the same old story, but complete renewal.

The Bible even tells us that when Jesus resurrected, his closest confidants didn’t even recognize him at first. Woah. I think I want that!

I think about how something that happened thousands of years ago can set the tone for how we live today and it awakens me to the reality that I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time begging God for resuscitation when He was offering resurrection.

After we lost our son – born stillbirth – and I almost bled out on an operating table, I spent months trying to get back to who I was before. I kept wondering if and when the driven, productive, well-planned version of me would show back up. I wanted God to just breathe enough life back into the old Liz so she could keep going. Me, but just… not dead anymore.

But that’s not what He was doing. He was trying to make something new, and I kept fighting Him because new meant I had to let the old version actually die. I see now why, because everything seems to come into focus in reflection, doesn’t it? To be totally honest, that version of me – the one with the respected reputation and revenue metrics and illusion of being polished – was kinda the worst.

Alright, that’s harsh, I guess. It’s a tough admission for me because that version of me had great intentions and did some really good work in the lives of others, but she just wasn’t it. God had been beckoning me into a new version of myself for years, but I was so comfortable in this identity of “success”, that shedding it wasn’t something I felt ready to do without the nudge.

Oh, He nudged me, alright.

All those years of striving, making things happen on the back of sheer will, experiencing wins followed almost immediately by the void that follows as closely as a suckerfish… and wondering why and when things would just finally click. When would more breath, more life come back into my lungs… never realizing that that wasn’t the plan.

We love the idea of new life, but we’re less thrilled about the tomb.

Something – that identity, my ego – had to die, first. The tomb is the in-between. The part where the thing you were is actually, fully dead and the thing you’re becoming hasn’t shown up yet. Where people keep asking what you’re doing now and you don’t have a clean answer. Where your old identity doesn’t fit but your new one hasn’t been issued yet.

So many of us, myself included, get focused on what we want to fix, or how we could just go back to how things were, or to stabilize. We want God to breathe just enough life back into the thing we already built so it can limp along a little longer. When what we really crave is resurrection. Why keep going back to how things were and wonder why it doesn’t satiate?

The business model that’s been draining you for years – you keep tweaking it, optimizing it, hiring another coach to fix it. The pace that’s cost you your health, your presence, your family – you keep looking for a system that makes it sustainable. The identity you outgrew years ago but don’t know how to let go of. The version of success that sounded good at the time but has left you feeling empty.

You’re performing CPR on something God is trying to bury so He can raise something new in its place.

I have to imagine that resurrection is rather inconvenient, though. It’s always easier to go back to what you know.

I’ll speak for myself, I’m done begging God to help preserve some former version of me because she was familiar. I want true resurrection in my life. Every corner of it. So then the question becomes: am I willing to follow Him into what He has for me next? Because resurrection doesn’t just cost you the bad stuff, it costs you the good stuff, comfortable stuff, familiar stuff, even the stuff that still technically works. The stuff you’ve built your identity around.

There are parts of your life that you keep trying to resuscitate, when the opportunity is in resurrection and a new way of living. No more dragging tired, dry, old bones into your future, He has something new for you. Here’s my prayer, and I’m leaving it at the table in case you need it too:

Lord, give me a heart for your will for my life, and diminish my desire for anything I’ve been holding onto that is not of you. Whatever needs to go, let me trust You enough to let it go. I believe in the resurrection – give me the grace to live like someone truly made new.

Where are you asking for resuscitation when God is inviting you into resurrection?

Join me on Substack and let me know in the comments. This table has room.

Liz