In the End...

As a widow of a man who killed himself, I am painfully aware of suicide. Today is National Suicide Awareness Day. I’m aware...

I’m aware of the lonely nights where all I wait for is to hear the door squeaking open as he tries to sneak in after his shift...

I’m aware that I cannot walk down the beer aisle without glancing at the Blue Moon and fighting back the sinking feeling in my chest...

I’m aware at the days where I am so exhausted that I would like nothing more than my husband to be home so that I could hand the kids or dinner or laundry off to him...

I’m aware that my house and my yard are disasters because I am only one person and I cannot keep up with everything...

I’m aware that I have one daughter who is angry and doesn’t want anything to do with his memory and another who is crushingly sad that she doesn’t have a daddy and is the only one in her class that doesn’t have one...

I’m aware that I wasn’t aware of what was going on in my own household in the months leading up to his suicide...

I’m aware that I blame myself for a lot of things that happened and still have a hard time letting go of my guilt...

I’m aware that September and October get really hard to breathe and I fight to walk through those calendar turns every year, even though it’ll be eight years next month...

I’m aware that he will miss so many events in our lives and that my heart fractures if only for a second with each milestone we check off the list that he wasn’t here for...

I’m aware that I lie in bed at night, silently sobbing because the dream for our lives has been shattered and sometimes the pain in my soul is overwhelming...

I’m aware that I’m still paying for his choices, mentally, emotionally, physically, financially...

I’m aware that I’m alone and lonely and wish I had a partner, but that I want nothing to do with relationships or men or marriage...

I’m so so painfully aware of suicide. And I wish that I wasn’t. I wish no one was aware of it. But, we have got to do better! We have got to talk about suicide and mental illness and PTSD and loneliness and anxiety and depression. But we have also got to talk about God. And prayer. And faith. And loving each other. And being kind and understanding and supporting each other. We do need to increase awareness. We need to be aware of the risk factors and the signs and symptoms. We need to be aware of programs that are designed to help. We need to be aware of counselors and therapists and mental health providers. We do need to increase awareness. We need to be aware of the pain and the aftermath of suicide and the gaping hole it leaves in families. 

1 Corinthians 13:13 says this: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Love. We all need love. And we all need to know that God loves us. Even when the whole world has turned their backs on us, we can still know and be confident that God loves us. The greatest single life-changing force is love. Please be aware of those around you that need love! Share love! Let’s love people with everything we’ve got so that the cycle is broken and suicide is no more. 

In the end, we all need love. And in the end we all need God. We have the power to end suicide. We have the power to increase awareness. Let’s turn a single day of awareness in to lifetime of love and compassion and understanding. We don’t need to carry things on our own. In the end...

I’ll Fly Away...

Our whole lives we are taught to run away from danger. Our parents teach us about stranger danger from an early age. They tell us if someone we don’t know tries to get us into their car, or give us candy, or lure us away that we are to scream and run. In schools we practice locking down and running away from intruders. We are to put as much distance between us and the bad guy that we safely can. Run away. Get away. One large portion of the adrenal mechanism that we are created with is flight. Running away in moments of life-threatening danger. Run! Get away! 

Often in this journey that I am on, I have wanted to run away. To get in my car and leave. Drive for hours. Start over. Don’t tell anyone where I’m going and just begin again. I don’t. Well, I don’t anymore. There were some points in my journey that it just got to be too much and I did “run away.” One time I went to the office of the school where I worked and told them I needed a half day of sick leave. I needed to go home and I wasn’t feeling well. But I really just needed to run away. To get away. To get in my car and go sit on a beach for a few hours and just forget the world. 

We all run away in our own way. Brian used to drive to SeaTac and sit and watch the planes taking off and landing. This thought occurred to me while I was at one of my favorite “run away” methods - in the middle of the Zac Brown Band concert with my friend. Music is one of my run aways. And in the middle of the concert time froze for just a second as I watched the airplanes flying over the top of Safeco Field one after another. For one moment my husband’s “flight plan” intersected with my “flight plan” and time stood still. Tears filled my eyes as I remembered him in his moments in the middle of mine. We all need to just run away. Get away. The pressure of dealing with it all can be so crushing. It’s hard to breathe. It’s hard to see the path. It’s tough to find the message in the mess. So we run away. Whether it be in music. Or movies. Or watching airplanes. Or sports. Or diving. Whatever our method is for hiding from it all when it all gets to be too much. 

Except my husband couldn’t find solace in the airplanes anymore. His running away got to the point where the only relief he saw was in suicide. Exiting this world became his plan. Leaving the wife and the children that were his family and his world was the only option. The planes weren’t enough. Why on earth weren’t the planes enough? 

Well, they should have never been enough. Hope has to be built on more than airplanes or music or movies. Those things are good temporary escapes from the responsibilities and emotions of life. But they are not enough to pull us up and out of the yuck. There’s only one thing that offers permanent hope, a permanent fix, a permanent solution to the pain or sadness or grief or chaos that we find ourselves in. We have to be anchored to our Creator. To God. To the one who knows us inside and out. Deuteronomy 31:8 says “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”

Read that again. The first part especially. “It is the Lord who goes BEFORE you.” He’s there, waiting. Any situation you may find yourself in, He will be right there from the very beginning. Ready to catch you when you fall. Ready to wipe your tears. Ready to pick you up and dust you off and set you on the right path again. He will never leave us or forsake us. In our darkest hours, on the darkest path, He is right there in front of us, simply waiting for us to finally admit we can’t run away, we can’t do it alone, and we need to take His hand and walk through it all. 

September is National Suicide Prevention Month. I am painfully aware of the need for awareness to be brought to this topic. There isn’t a day, isn’t a moment that goes by that I don’t sink back to 2010 and think about Brian. The increasing absences. The frequent visits to the airport. He was running away. Trying to find the solace in his airplanes. When that didn’t work, instead of turning to God and crying out for help, he chose to slip into a forever sleep. My heart breaks when I think about Brian, and the countless others who couldn’t run away far enough from their pain. There’s a fine line, I think, between running away for a while and running away forever. We need conversations around suicide. We need to talk about it. We need to be willing to speak with a friend or a family member or a coworker and let them know that you care, that there is help, that you are there to listen when the running away doesn’t work. And the other side of that coin too! We need to find a person, a friend, a prayer partner, to turn to when running away stops working and the darkness seems to be taking over. 

So, stop running away and instead choose to run into Heavenly Father’s open arms. He’s ahead of you, waiting in the mess, patient in the trials, pausing to scoop you up, hold you close, and carry you back to where you belong. So, I’ll run away to my concerts, or run away to the beach, but I always know that when I get there, my God is waiting and watching, filling me with His grace and mercy. He will never leave me nor forsake me, and I hope each and every one of you accepts this truth for yourselves too.