Good morning…
On Tuesday morning, we returned again to our therapeutic community group on the PAWkids campus in Grove Park. Men and women. Young and old. Black and white. We gathered again following our summer break. For our activity, we chose various cards from a deck of images to give voice to things we’ve experienced since last seeing each other in May.
I chose a person holding a baby, telling them about my special week of caring for Charlie, our first grandson, and a card with a person surrounded by lots of children, signifying my hope for many grandkids. In between those two cards, I chose a card of people at a rainy funeral. Umbrellas. Gravestones. Gathering to grieve. I shared about the four suicides of friends this summer. The sadness. The pain. The unanswered questions.
“I made an attempt on my life,” one woman said in response.
“I actually tried to kill myself nine times,” another woman admitted. She tearfully added, “That is why I have to come to this group. This group has saved my life. Learning to share my feelings each week helps to keep me alive.”
In this moment, I think about my darkest season of depression and how, to end my unrelenting pain, I contemplated suicide myself. I open my journal and read the words I wrote while Charlie was taking a nap on August 1st.
“If I had not made it up from my deep valley of depression, if I had not come alive from my soul’s struggles, who would have taken care of Charlie this week?” I wondered on the page. “I sit in a juxtaposed position, watching Charlie sleep soundly on the baby monitor after he fell asleep in my arms. And I have this orange folder containing my old writings collected during the darkest night of my soul. I entitled it ‘Dying to Live’.”
“I haven’t read these words for ages,” I wrote, “but my dear friend who finds herself in her own deep deep valley of depression handed me back my orange folder this week. Because I thought it might be helpful for her to have a familiar hand to hold onto as she journeys through her own excruciating pain, I offered to share my dark writing. I hoped that my honest words on the page might quietly say, ‘I sorta know how you feel.'”
Of this painful collection of real wrestling, my friend said, “What an honor to read your feelings from back then – the progression you lay out is so raw.”
“I have not revisited these words in years,” I wrote in my journal, “but sitting beside Charlies’s baby monitor is a peaceful setting to consider what I endured as I went through the process of dying to my own desires to live into God’s dreams.”
As my spiritual mentor Betty Skinner once said, “Retrospect is such a beautiful view.”
As we each take our turn teetering between life or death, retrospect is such a beautiful view. With an ability to look back, it means that somehow, some way the power to choose life defeated our temptation to prematurely die. I am so grateful I made it up from my deep valley. Sadly, so many others have not.
I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you today: I place before you Life and Death, Blessing and Curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live. And love God, your God, listening obediently to him, firmly embracing him. Oh yes, he is life itself (Deuteronomy 30:19-20a, MSG).
…Sue…
