Originally published in Resurgam: Vessels of Light Literary Journal. Posted here in full while Vessels of Light undergoes construction.

Can These Bones Live?

By Ellie Hunja 

“The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” 

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” 

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’” –Ezekiel 37:1-6, NIV

“I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory.”¹

When I first heard this line from Hamilton, it made time stand still. The thought was breathtaking. Could it be? Were there others like me? 

For my whole adult life, my brain has rehearsed death on a loop: all the ways my car could collide with another, all the things that could crash down on me as I took a walk, all the calamities that could steal the ones I loved from me forever. My mind would constantly attempt to outthink disaster before it could strike, and it was exhausting. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda once shared in an interview that writing that line, admitting it out loud, made him feel naked. It’s a vulnerable revelation. That even as my laugh booms, eyes crinkling at the corners, I’m never far from the next graphic image of death filling my mind and stealing my peace. 

Twice, I’ve looked death in the face. At 19, a “freak wave” swept my best friend and me into the ocean from the rocky shore. As the water pressed my body deep below the surface, my mind seemed to float above it, calmly contemplating that this would be my last moment. Then, my hands found a boulder to cling to, and my lungs found air, but my friend was gone. 

Again, at 34. My uterus ruptured as my third baby was entering the world. His cries signaled a healthy body, but mine felt every stitch for an hour as they pieced me back together. Some weeks later, deep in the throes of depression and PTSD, I searched #uterinerupture on Instagram, desperate for someone who could understand. Photo after photo appeared, most in grayscale, #RIP after #RIP to angel babies—and some mothers, too. 

In the decade and a half between these incidents, I thought I’d found a measure of healing. With every trip to the ocean, every moment of joy soaked in, every effort to remind my body that she is safe, I felt further and

further from the terror steeped in my soul. But in the wake of my birth trauma, it all came rushing back. The constant vigilance that made my heart race. The endless rumination on how many ways I could die today. The pictures of doom flashing in my mind each time my husband ran a few minutes late or my baby overslept. 

For years, my trauma had convinced me that if I could just anticipate every possible danger, I could somehow protect myself and the people I loved. The hypervigilance, the relentless mental rehearsals—they felt like a heavy but necessary armor, shielding me from being caught off-guard. But instead of safety, they only gave me exhaustion. 

But when my miracle baby, Ezekiel, was nearly 6 months old, God met me in the most unexpected way. Halfway around the world, on a trip to Europe with my mom and sister. 

We spent 4 days in the Czech Republic, where my great-grandparents were born. The aroma of the very first restaurant we stepped into sent my mother straight back to her grandma’s kitchen. We were there to explore our roots, but my sister had a unique excursion in mind, too: “Want to go see the Bone Church?” 

An hour’s train ride outside of Prague, the Sedlec Ossuary is the final resting place for at least 50,000 people. In the 13th century, the leader of the local monastery visited the Holy Land and brought back a small amount of earth from Golgotha, the site of Jesus’ burial. He scattered it over the cemetery, and as word spread, Christians across eastern Europe were eager to be buried there. Over time, there simply wasn’t enough room, so thousands of skeletons were exhumed and stacked into pyramids to be stored more efficiently—not an uncommon practice at that time. 

What was uncommon was the work in 1870 that turned these heaps of remains into art. Sedlec Ossuary became a chapel decorated entirely by bones, from the cross on the wall to the elaborate chandelier hanging from the ceiling. 

As I walked in, I expected to take in a spectacle, an oddity, something spooky to gawk at and then move on from. What I encountered, instead, was a spiritual experience. A healing. 

I stared at the thousands of bones, thinking of the human lives they represented. Every inch of the space was ornately crafted, with perfect patterns of skulls and bones lining the entryway, arching above us, and framing every turn. 

At the back of the chapel stood a crucifix of Jesus. In the serene quiet of the space, I rested my gaze on His wounded side. Suddenly, my breath caught in my throat as I realized today was Good Friday. A day to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, to reflect on the pain of His death and the love He displayed by suffering on our behalf, for dying that we might have eternal life. 

At once, something settled in my spirit. I had assumed this place would feel morbid, disturbing, or even invasive, the final resting place for so many turned into a shrine for the macabre. But instead, even surrounded by reminders of death, my heart wasn’t racing. There were no terrifying flashbacks. My heart was quiet and my breath was steady as a thought washed over me: “They’re not here.”

These were just bones, after all. The individuals they represented—the fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers—they weren’t here. Their souls, their essence, who they were—none of that could be housed in a little chapel. They weren’t resting here. They were alive in eternity, dwelling with Jesus Christ. 

For years, I had carried the guilt of survival and the unspoken question of “why did I survive?” when so many others—and my best friend—didn’t. But in this sacred space, I realized I had been asking the wrong thing. Even if I could never fully understand the “why,” there was a more crucial answer I needed to seek: “God, how should I live?” 

“You don’t have to live in fear,” God whispered to me gently. “Death has no power over Me.” 

I looked at these bones and thought of Jesus, who overcame death once and for all when He died and rose again. “O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55, KJV). These symbols of mortality, these skulls and bones, aren’t creepy or scary. They just are. 

For years, my brain had dealt with my trauma by frantically anticipating every chance of danger—a desperate, paralyzing attempt at protection. But the bones all around me and the wound in Jesus’ side each professed a supreme truth. Death is inevitable. It reaches all of us and can’t be outmaneuvered or controlled. And yet, it has no ultimate power. My fear was replaced with a deep knowing that death isn’t something to preempt. It’s already defeated. 

I glanced at the solemn, curious faces surrounding me. I wondered if they could see the release taking place in my soul, the dark cloud being lifted. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” God’s Word tells us, a truth both inescapable and liberating (Gen. 3:19, NIV). As I embraced death’s inevitability and the certainty of eternal life beyond it, fear lost its grip on my soul. 

And for the first time in a long time, as I stepped back out into the sunlight, I walked forward without rehearsing how it all might end. 

***1. Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton. “My Shot.” By Lin-Manuel Miranda, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Havoc, Prodigy, The Notorious B.I.G., Easy Mo Bee, and Roger Troutman. Recorded September 2015. Track 3 on Hamilton. Atlantic Recording.