Good morning…
I woke to her email, short and deep. I wrote her right back, deep and long. Somehow God ministered to both of us as we unpacked our pain. Sharing just my private response, I invite you into our intimate expression.
******
Personal Email from Sue Allen – August 30th, 2019
Another suicide? Yes, it is completely heartbreaking. I know this truth touches your own raw, open wounds. Not enough time has passed for your immense anguish to even begin to scab over. Loss after loss after loss. We are not alone, I trust that to be true, but at times like these our God feels incredibly invisible, appears so so far way, seems completely absent, dark hour after dark hour.
Where is God when life hurts so bad? The exhausted minds of our loved ones have tricked them into thinking they are alone, that no one understands how much they hurt, and that somehow death offers more to them than the bittersweetness of this life. But are these fickle feelings really true?
I was thinking yesterday that if there is such a thin veil between heaven and earth, then might those in heaven see fully as God sees fully, might they see fully the pain, the anguish, the torment their suicide sets in motion? I began wondering if witnessing the sobbing of those they loved as best they could, if seeing every ounce of sadness so clearly somehow tarnishes their experience of the heaven they hoped for. I know it says in the Bible there will be no more tears, no more crying, no more pain in heaven, and that offers an intoxicating escape when people are saturated with sorrow on earth, but might heaven also include witnessing the pain their abrupt ending passes along? Might heaven involve intimately unpacking their own hard, heaviness with our Creator, talking face to face with the God who sees all, knows all, loves us all? Might there be gradual, not immediate, healing of hurts for our loved ones in heaven, alongside the gradual, not immediate, healing for those left grieving on earth? Might our full, collaborative healing be somehow knit together?
I don’t know. I think about these things with God regularly, wanting so badly to make peace with all the pain. There is no making sense of suicide, I just want to shuffle my way into a sanctuary of peace amid all the sorrow streaming down. I yearn so much to blaze a pathway from pain to peace for myself and for the many left hurting after every single suicide. I have an aching need to uncover a personalized path toward the healing of Wholeness, before I am empowered to go back and walk step by step beside those now paralyzed by grief, those who have no idea how to inch forward from complete despair to slowly living on.
I love you and keep you in my heart, in my mind, in my prayers. Always. You know I adore any time we spend together, and I trust you will reach out to me by text, email, or phone whenever connection with me feels good to you.
???Sue
******
It is in times like these that I know I am a NINE on the Enneagram. My core motivation is a relentless drive for peace. Peace for me. Peace for you. Peace for all who yearn to be healed from the excruciating pain waking us in the dark, wee hours of today.
…because of the tender mercy of our God … the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace (Luke 1:78-79, NIV).
…Sue…
