Good morning…
At 1:00 pm, our son texted us about losing a high school friend to suicide.
Then at 1:50 pm, a longtime friend texted me while I was walking at the horse farm. “Hi – can you talk?” began our exchange. “Yes, please call.”
We talked for a while about how best to support her close friend, a woman whose husband had died by suicide on April 30th and now, unthinkably, had just lost her twenty-five year old son to suicide the night before. “Sue, will you write a blog for us, asking the community for ongoing prayers for this family?” Humbled by the opportunity, I replied, “Certainly.”
Then she told me the name of the young man who had found his roommate that tragic night. When we got off the phone, I called that young man’s mother, another dear friend with whom I have raised our kids since kindergarten. She picked up on the second ring. “I’m not taking phone calls, but when I saw it was you, I knew you would bring comfort to this horrible situation. I am numb and in shock, but I know we need prayers. We need lots and lots of prayers for these kids and these families who are heartbroken and devastated.”
I feel privileged to blog this morning, asking for your heartfelt prayers. To guide us in these overwhelming moments, I am mysteriously drawn to a little book I have not opened until right now, Paula D’Arcy’s Rivers of Sorrow, Currents of Hope: A Prayerbook for the Grieving. Years ago, Paula also lost her husband and her child all at once.
The preface reads: “When I first experienced the loss of my family, it felt as if someone were standing in front of me saying, ‘Here is the life being held out to you. Can you take this situation – this sorrow – and find your way?’ I was completely disoriented. It felt like I was in a foreign country, unable to speak the language. So I began to pray.
I prayed to find hope and to have endless questions answered. Prayer expressed my fear and my confusion. I prayed because it was all I could do. I asked to be shown the way. Through prayer I found a God I had never known. In time it made my old concept of God seem feeble by comparison. Prayer picked me up and opened me to a radically new understanding of human life. I began to change from the inside out. Eventually, the change freed me.”
Might Paula’s words guide our prayers for those experiencing excruciating sorrow?
Loving God, may those hurting find hope and have their endless questions answered. Please help us to express to you all of our fear and all of our confusion. Lord, help us to be shown the way forward. Through prayer, might we find intimacy with you in ways we have never before known? Through prayer, pick us up. Through prayer, open us up to a radically new understanding of human life. Eternal One, change us from the inside out. Eventually allow our prayers to invite us into freedom.
In my trouble, I prayed to the Lord. I called to my God to help me. He heard my voice from his home in heaven. My prayer reached his ears (Psalm 18:6, EASY). Like the crescent moon shining in the darkness of this early morning, may the wholeness of God expand in our sorrow.
…Sue…
