Dead By Self I want to be clear from this sentence onward, that yes, this is a Bedtime Story about suicide, which I admit is maybe not the meal you want to see on the menu, and I know there are those out there for whom it probably is best to just move on away from this…but before you do… …I’ll say this, even with nothing yet written, that I cannot help but see that the final story will paint God as Great, and we, we little people, as loved even to the last moment. No: even for eternity… If ever there was a story about suicide that had hope to it, I bet it’s gonna be this one. ____ ________________ Background. The first suicide that I was aware of: I was just a little out of high school and a friend of mine tells me, SoandSo, the guy that could jump so high, he killed himself, and then this curious information, they found his car on the side of the road with a flat tire, some distance from the house, and he had apparently walked from his car to the house and ended it. And I’ve never gotten the thought out of my head, was the flat tire the last straw? ___ ____________ Like a lot of you I grew up a Sunday School kid, knew all the stories about Daniel in the Lion’s Den, David and Goliath, and Samson and Delilah. The God we learned about was All Everything. Nothing outside His power, nothing outside His knowledge, nothing outside His presence. This God was all about Love. Most of us didn’t/don’t understand what He gets out of whateveritisaboutus, but it is humbling and crumbling on those rare moments (usually when we’re road-kill down) when we really see ourselves in our actual size and limits, and realize that He, so great, so beyond earning His attention, He thinks we’re cool, and loves us more than momma and grandma could ever… Nothing we could do could get in between His love for us. We could break every commandment. We could shoplift Wrigley’s gum or burn down a church or shoot Billy Graham, and the blood of Jesus was greater than our worst offense. He wants us. I don’t know why. But He wants us. He wants us forever. But there was this one sin – the Unpardonable Sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit – and as a kid this was the Sunday School version of a scary story, told around the campfire… What was it? It’s so vague! _____ _______________ In my childhood I saw God writing with a pencil in His Book of Life. I was good, for the moment, and my name was there, but misbehave and he flipped the pencil around and erased my name, five, ten, a hundred times a day. Nonsense. As I have aged God has gotten Bigger. God isn’t petty. I grew up around a lot people who saw things in black ‘n white, and it made sense at some level, murder was bad and donating a kidney was good. But black ‘n white thinking is just too small. All the complexity of life ends up in the gray. Black ‘n white, it’s just two armies throwing rocks at each other from opposite sides of the river. In the river, in the gray, that’s where the growth is, where the truth dwells, the best of humanity only happens when you’re grappling for the switch to turn on The Light. If the best of we humans are drawn to the gray, how much more is God there in the gray? Unlike us, He knows literally every single detail, especially The Whys. Consider the most hidden and complex thing about us, the literal one-of-a-kind psychology of each human. Forget fingerprints and retinas – it’s the psychology and emotional map that makes us utterly unique. He knows every particle of how it came to be. He knows the limits and flaws of our parents, of our community, of our culture, of our own personal boundaries. Not parent, not spouse, not No-Body understands us like He does. Remember that point… ____ _______ Remember back a few decades when there was a frenzy of violence with postal workers? (For those of you youngsters, google “Going postal”.) Shootings, murders, mail men! I’m not in mail, but I’m sortofintheworldof antiques, which is a sleepy, sentimental world, which attracts people who aren’t trying to conquer the world or live in a mansion…just regular people who like old stuff. And sonofagun but I’ve counted four (and maybe a fifth) suicide from people in the antique business over the last ten years. One of them, a lady: I saw her in Warrenton Texas, at the big Round Top show, and we sat across from each other at a picnic table, drinking lemonade in the afternoon, catching up on things, how long’s it been since you were here, you find any treasures, if you’re looking for Mexican food there’s a place in LaGrange you’d like, and she was so cool and calm, her husband right next to her, and a month later… The husband, he’s the fifth, officially an accident, but I wonder… He lasted another two years after her. Two were people facing nothing-but-bad-news in health. One, it’s not hard to imagine he was doing it to spare his wife the drain of the bad-end. _______ ______________ And me? Those of you who’ve read these stories for some time have surely caught the hint that I’ve made the acquaintance of Pain and Down and Despair. And that is true. Let’s say, suicide got as far as daydream. Which is saying something… I’m happy to be alive. I feel loved-by-Him. I think my best days are ahead. I’m grateful that I never reached my last straw. But others have… _______ ________________ There’s this story from World War II, at a Nazi concentration camp, and the Germans are hanging some Jews to make an example. They’ve gathered other Jewish prisoners to watch the hanging. It’s not a clean thing, this death. The hanged are kicking and fighting for life. In the crowd of watchers this one Jew whispers, “Where is God?” Where are You, God, at these moments? You’re omnipresent, aren’t you? You’re not elsewhere, are you, tending to some smaller thing, while This Death happens, are You? Do you read about it in the paper? Does some angel send You a memo? One of the witnesses survived the war. Kept chewing on that question, Where is God… until he came to the conclusion that He was There. He’s Up There, in the noose, at the moment, like Pure Love does. Even in the bad times. That story… There’s a lifetime of meals there. He’s there. Even at suicides. Maybe: especially at suicides, there with His beloved, who feel so alone… Why? Or is it WHY!!!!!???!!! Isn’t that The Question for suicides? And nobody really knows, but He does. The Father knows. If ever there was gray, it has to be in the muddled muck of despair and hopelessness that leads to suicide, and nobody can sort gray into order like God. ______ ______________ As for me I will make no pronouncements about death-by-self. That’s God turf there. I hold here: that God knew, that God understood (completely/absolutely). However gray it was, and how could suicide not be gray, it was never too gray for God to not see it clear. A suicide isn’t rational. He understands. A suicide is a state of hopelessness. He understands. We cannot descend beneath his complete understanding. As un-nouned as suicide must feel, as un-adjectived as it must be…not for Him. He sees, He knows, He understands, He loves. We’re sad for those who said no-more, and yes, we’re mad at them too, but I hold it up, and I believe it, that God loves our departed’s soul, loves our child, our spouse, our friend, in a way that is beyond our understanding of love, and if we love them, how-much-more does He, and as to their soul, as to their eternity, I’d nominate leaving that in the good hands of Our Father, who went through a bunch of trouble to buy our entry into eternity with Him. Only God knows what is unpardonable. How Great He is, how Full and Deep, how So-Much-More than we who weep at the funeral. As for me, I feel sad for the loneliness of their pain, but feel Hope for their Future. God is Boss. He wants so much to give us an address in eternity. None of us wants it any other way. _________ _______________ This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we rest under the canopy of Hope and Faith and Trust, and look for a day when “God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’"
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 03:23:36 +0000
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