From Death to Healing

From Death to Healing

From Death to Healing

The following two articles were written by a mother whose son had committed suicide.

The first was written over thirty years ago, shortly after her son took his life.

She wrote the first on the advice of her counselor at the time, to help her heal from this horrific event in her and her husband’s life.

The second she wrote just a short time ago.

It was interesting to see how her perspective did or did not change over the last thirty years.


 

Guest Blog By Carole France

 

“My dearest John,

I miss you.

I long to hear your voice and to share days, hours or even minutes with you.

The love I have for you is still in my heart and I am unable to express it to any other human being.

It is yours alone.

When you were born your dad was so happy that he had a son.

He announced that he had a fishing buddy.

You would carry on his name.

I will always treasure the night that you and I spent together when you were a tiny baby.

You brought me joy your entire life from just being you.

You were intelligent, handsome, fun, funny, interested in learning, deep, complicated, challenging, caring, cautions, sometimes fearful, yet you were also brave and independent.

Little did I know how unprepared I was to raise you children and I know I made mistakes that hurt you.

I know the anger and frustration I saw in you as a teenager was really the disappointment you felt over not having the close family you desired.

All that anger in you worried me.

What you needed was our love, support, time, understanding, patience, and guidance.

You needed us to tell you that God knows and loves you beyond any happening ever in life.

He made you, understands you, and is committed to you – regardless of your struggles.

Instead, though, your dad and I lectured to try and get you to do what we wanted you to do.

I want you to know how sorry I am that you missed out on the love and nurturing that you deserved.

My heart will ache always for what I was not able to give you.

You were dealing with painful emotions and circumstances beyond what a teen should have to face.

They obviously consumed you and you felt powerless to fix it.

I wish I could have explained to you that life is like a book… each chapter is different from the other.

When your young and troubled it may seem like the chapter you are experiencing is the only one and that nothing will ever change.

The truth is that 1,3,5 years down the road our relationships, circumstance, and events are all different.

Of course, we always have stress in our lives, but you would have had more life experiences, more answers of your own from which to draw, and more people in your life to help support you when you asked.

John, when you made the choice to end your own life, I blamed myself, but I will not accept that responsibility anymore.

Even though I will forever feel badly about what you did, it was you who made the choice to kill yourself.

There are so many other choices you could have made, and I know we could have gotten through it together.

But I understand that on that day it was just too much.

You took yourself away from everyone who loves you.

Your decision brought deep and lasting pain to many, many people.

If you were here today all our lives would be more complete.

We would still have problems to deal with, but we would face them together.

I can’t help but wonder who you would have grown up to be, who you would have married and what the voices of your children would have sounded like calling me “Grandma”.

I will always wish that you would have talked to me and asked for my opinion on your leaving.

I would have begged and pleaded with you to stay!

You matter!

I truly and fully love and miss you and I want you to be here,

Mom”

A portrait of John from his high school yearbook.

Thirty Years Later

“A few weeks ago, I was asked to write a follow-up some thirty years later to my message expressed to my son John shortly after his death.

Since we as a family talk about John often I wasn’t prepared for the return of painful emotions this would bring.

My thoughts and feelings held the same raw loss and loneliness experienced those first hours, days, months and years so long ago.

The difference this time was that I knew what to do.

After years of crying out to my Savior, Jesus, I realized He had taught me to go to His word for honesty, truth, comfort, and the healing He has offered me over these years.

Has it been easy?

NO!!!

But it has been REAL!

It has been the most helpful help offered in navigating the intense grief and emptiness in losing one’s precious child in such a horrific way.

I’ve learned that God really is Who He says He is and that He makes good on all His promises made in His Bible.”

 

From Death to Healing

 


 

Go here for information and help on Suicide Prevention

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Inescapable Hope

Inescapable Hope

Inescapable Hope

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12.

 

As a sinner myself, I am personally and directly responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion; it is my sin that drove the nails through His hands, and it is my sin that brought God humiliation.

The torment of Christ is something that I deserved to experience for all eternity.

Jesus quoting Psalm 22 gives us a picture of Jesus’s spiritual state in that moment. Similar to how one quotes a movie or song to describe how one is feeling, Jesus quotes Psalm 22.

The Psalm itself describes tremendous suffering of various kinds yet ends with a steadfastness of faith that ensures trust in God. His last words, a quote of Psalm 31:5, He shows that He was unwavering in Hope.

This provides a terrifying form of suffering that the wicked must endure false hope.

If Jesus was not vindicated by the resurrection, then His Hope would have indeed been vain. Nonetheless, as an eternal Being experiencing hope deferred, He experienced spiritual sickness of an eternity of deferred hope.

Inescapable Hope

We all place hope in something.

A person who is not saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, too, has their hope in something. Perhaps it is hope in a better future, better living circumstances, or even the cessation of suffering via death.

Unfortunately, there is only one proper place to place one’s hope: The Incarnate Lord.

All other hopes are vain false hopes, and Hell is to experience an eternity of bitter deferred hope.

Even if someone were to try to abandon all hope as they enter the gates of Hell, they would still hope that the abandonment of hope might somehow produce a better existence, be it through a pseudo-death via eternal transcendental meditation or by holding to a hope of “making the best of it”.

Hope is an intrinsic part of the human experience, and the damned have an eternity of their vain hope burning in their stomachs by the logical necessity of conscious existence. 

Inescapable Hope

Jesus is the only true Hope, and only he can survive experiencing the full brunt of eternal deferred hope.

By Jesus being vindicated, so too was an eternity’s worth of deferred Hope fulfilled.

That is the same Hope that is offered to you and I through the Gospel of Christ.

How sure are you that you are placing your hope in the right thing? 

 

Inescapable Hope

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