Stop the Bleeding.......

"We’re called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world to stop the bleeding" ~ Don Miller

This last week was a hard one. My daughter's best friend lost her mother to suicide- the daughter is only 6. I've been spending the better part of this last week helping her and her dad sort through some of the grief and questions that come with such a tragic loss.

How do you make sense of such a senseless tragedy?
When you're in ministry you have to deal with grief and loss more often but for me, frequency doesn't make it easier. Especially when its this kind of situation. When I heard the news my mind immediately went to the last time I saw her which was a couple of months ago. We were sitting on the couch in her living room and we talked about our girls and then she talked to me about the divorce she was going through. She didn't seem depressed or really upset in any way. She even seemed like she was ready for the divorce to be final so everyone could move forward. So as I'm replaying our last conversation, I search for what I could have said or done differently. I wonder if I'd just done something differently if things would have ended better.

I went through a similar thought process a little over a year ago when my brother-in-law took his own life leaving my beautiful niece and nephew to pick up the pieces. Even though he and my sister divorced he'd been in my life since I was 14 and I loved him so much. I remember talking to my niece shortly after. The brokeness in her voice crushed my heart, but I knew the pain I was feeling was a mere fraction of what she was dealing with.

I think everyone who knows someone who commits suicide goes through this mental run down of the "what if's". We all wonder if we were the reason or if we could have somehow saved that person.

In my line of work it feels like a failure even when you barely knew the person.

It was in that guilt-ridden moment that I realized how real the battle is that is being waged for us. God loves us and pursues us but there is also an enemy who fights to hurt and even destroy us. And the first place he works is in our minds; beneath the surface. We are children of God and our value is beyond measure so if the enemy can convince us that we are worthless than he has won.

It left me thinking about what someone must be feeling and thinking when they are to a place where death seems like the best option. What a place of hopeless despair that must be. How dark and lonely is it there? I think nothing grieves the heart of God more than seeing a beloved child in this place.

I've heard some people call people who commit suicide selfish or saying that "they took the easy way out" but I would disagree. If you talk to people who've attempted suicide they will tell you that they felt like a worthless burden and their friends and family would be better off. Of course, that is never the reality but the enemy has spent so much time feeding these lies to them that they are convinced this is true.

Yeah suicide is bad- blah, blah, blah. So what's my point? My point is simple: love people. Love all people- even the unlovable, emotionally draining ones. You never know what is going on beneath the surface. You never know when your small act of random kindness will save someone's life. When we love people with God's love it brings truth and light to them. The lies of the enemy can't win over the truth of God. So often we associate suicide with troubled teens but it is an increasingly popular cause of death in people ages 18-35. It's too late for my friend and my brother but there could be someone in your life now that still has a chance.

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