Inevitable
BY Anjelina gonzalez
Inevitable.
The five syllable word rolls about my mind, bouncing in vacant corners like an old TV screensaver.
Inevitable.
That’s the word I chose to describe my life. It is always inevitable. Misfortune-wise, at least.
When I was younger, I didn’t know how to swim with my head above the water. I think the longer a person spends sitting at the pool’s bottom, the more likely they are to drown.
It’s easier to drown than it is to tread water. Dying is inevitable, so why fight against it?
I watch the last bubble of air rise to the surface, my legs pump into the floor, and I’m gasping for air. Maybe today is not a guarantee. .
——-
On friendship number three, inevitable begins to cover my text screen. Did I mean to send that with echo?
In three months we will have our first argument. This will determine whether we stay friends.
Sure enough, timepasses and ‘te amo’ becomes ‘no te conozco.’
Has inevitable been anything but so?
——-
Another year passes, and now on friendship number four.
Things are good, too good, so it’s no surprise when the words slither in my ear before a fatal and heart wrenching strike: “I’m sorry. It’s inevitable.”
“But it doesn’t have to be.”
It is too late, venomous veins leave me intoxicated. I have no antidote, and hope is but a bleak and empty vote.
Was it truly inevitable?
——-
Maybe in this life, darkness is inevitable: a future of endless heartbreaks and sufferings and afflictions and self-loathing and betrayal.
Maybe my end, my final breaths, are alone and inevitable.
Maybe it is inevitable that my loneliness is profoundly alone.
Maybe it was inevitable….
Maybe only some things are for certain, but is inevitable always inevitably bad?
It is inevitable that Christ comforts those who rest in Him.
It is inevitable that goodness will abound and pain will be no more once again.
Truthfully, life and death may be the only things we truly know. Everything else is just possibly, maybe, could be.
Yes, I may be more likely to drown when I tread my pool’s water, but I don’t have to. That is a risk — a gamble to keep living, and if I win, swimming is much more fulfilling than sitting alone in endless blue.
Maybe it is inevitable our friendship fell apart, but maybe it is also inevitable that it is to become something far greater and new.
Maybe in the future we fall apart — we never speak again, but maybe we have to choose to roll the dice, to take a chance on uncertainty.
——
Christ is my only inevitable. He asked us to gamble on the souls of others. If you’re a Calvinist, it’s inevitable you and every elect shall be saved, but you evangelize anyway. If you’re Arminian, it is inevitable that those who don’t believe will live in eternal damnation, so we spread the good news in hopes that the inevitable will become another inevitable.
We may or may not choose our inevitable end or inevitable eternity. We choose the living of this inevitable in-between space. Which in turn, leads to the inevitable consequence waiting on the other side.
But if we are Christians, it is nothing short of inevitable to be overflowing in love for others — to live lovingly in the model of Christ and commune in the core of our reason for creation: fellowship.
So yes, the inevitable pains of this broken world are but for a short while, but with Christ, Heaven has already met Earth.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” [1]
It is inevitable.
SOURCES
[1] Revelation 21:4 (ESV)