Wrecked

Suicide is a ruinous act. It not only puts an end to one person’s life, it also affects the lives of others in conscious and subconscious ways for years to come.

At the time my father chose to end his life by suicide, I was too young to see the events leading up to his death. But, now as an adult, I have a better view. 

From my understanding, his depression brought a sense of hopelessness. Medicating his hopelessness with alcohol sent him into a deeper stupor resulting in a series of job losses. His drinking, depression, and job losses were a destructive cycle that he could not break free from. Instead, the destructive cycle broke him. He saw no other way out than to take it upon himself to end his life. An awful ending for anyone’s life.

His suicide had its immediate affects on his wife and seven kids. Sorrow, confusion and silence reigned in the household. No one, including our mom, knew how to negotiate the devastation of a suicide. 

Unlike the physical wreckage that natural catastrophes such as a flood or tornado leave in their wake, a suicide leaves emotional desolation. Emotions, unlike ruined possessions, are not visible, yet they are deeply felt. 

Oh if only I could have picked up and washed the dirt off my sorrow. Oh if I could have only put my confusion on hangers and arranged it according to colors. Oh if only I could have glued the silence back into an audio language. 

But, I couldn’t. Instead, I lived within and among the wreckage, stepping carefully around everyone else’s unseen but felt hardship while at the same time, keeping mine confined. 

It was no wonder that at 18 I was eager to leave home and what I’d hoped, the hardship, desolation and devastation behind. No one had told me that wherever I went, so went the mess. 

Healing Self?

Since I no longer lived among the invisible wreckage that I’d stepped around for so long at home, I believed I now had the power to make a better life for myself. But then, I discovered that I too had a destructive cycle, one that almost destroyed my life.  

My cycle went like this: If I worked hard enough, I had the power to make a better life for myself. If I was charming enough, people would like me. But, the happy life; a good job, a wonderful relationship with my partner, that I worked so hard to manipulate did not materialize, creating great frustration. Unfortunately, frustration does wear well with charm. I felt as though I was living a scam, a scam that I could not sustain. 

Restored

It was when I came to the brink of ending my life, that I realized how similar my cycle of destructive thinking was to my dad’s. Fortunately though, God showed up and said, “You could choose life,” and I listened and believed.

The compelling evidence is clear: In God and by God my life has been restored. Only God can deliver us from the wreckage brought on by our erroneous ideas that in living independently from Him we’ll find a happy life. 

Why Bother?

Why bother being restored? We’ve been created to live in complete dependence upon God and when we do, our lives are reconstructed. Only God can bring life out of death, beauty from ashes, and joy out of sorrow.