Suicide

This is my 50th post to this blog. I've tried to post items supporting its title: Do Not Be Anxious. But I know so many people who are still so anxious, who need to read these words. Perhaps now is the time to publish my own worst anxiety, and how I got past it.

Orig: 01/20/09 (to a few friends)

I think suicide has touched my thoughts a number of times in the past: the thought of giving up. Some have written that suicide is the sin against the Holy Spirit, the one which cannot be forgiven. I don’t know about that. Some others have written that we can never judge this as an unforgivable sin, we never know, even in cases of very obvious despair, how God will judge. I CERTAINLY don’t know about that.

I do know that despair can be overcome, if we just think about things instead of reacting to them. The thing we often forget, in our despair, is that if we give up, it is not “the end”. God is eternal. Our life is eternal. Even if it ends on this earth, our life will go on in eternity. At some point we will be able to look back at our moment of despair, and reflect on it, just as we can think back now on earlier events in our lives. What will we think of our despair then? One thing I am sure of is that we will look back and see that while we had given up, with us at that moment was God’s Holy Spirit – and He had not given up. I know that, even now, for He didn’t give up on me.

Look at that last sentence I wrote. What do you think are the key words? “We will look back”? “God’s Holy Spirit”? “He had not given up”? No, those are all important, but there is only one key word in that last sentence: “me”.

In reaching my own despair, I believed had done my best; I had tried hard; and despite my great knowledge of things, I could not see a solution. And although I did not consciously think it, I felt alone. If I even thought of anyone else, it was to quickly dismiss them: they cannot help me, and they don’t know and/or they don’t care. They cannot understand me and what I am feeling. That’s what I believed. Perhaps, I considered that even God didn’t care.

That’s the point, I think, that now gives me pause on the forgive-ability of suicide: If I thought that even God didn’t care, I was not thinking rationally, no matter how organized I believed my thoughts to be. By the very definition of who and what He is: God cares. Even if I gave up, He never did. He never does, on any of us. Not even you.

We are not alone. Despair can be overcome by realizing that God is with us now, and his eternal being will be with us in the future.

The one word which REALLY describes our problem is: me. In our despair, our frantic thoughts, our looking for a way out of our problem, we think we are alone. We’re not. We think WE have to fix what is wrong. WE don’t. We think the only thing we can do is end things. It’s not the only thing, and it won’t be the end of things. In our despair, we’re confused on many points, but let’s end the confusion on the key point …

We’re not alone. There is not just a me!

The solution to our problem is to reflect on the point that we are not alone. The Catholic Church teaches that we are all part of the Body of Christ, a sometimes difficult concept to grasp in our hearts. In simple words, it means we’re not alone. As head of the Body of Christ, Jesus can find a solution to any of our problems. And what of the others who are members of the Body of Christ, our friends and neighbors? We are but a small part in the Body of Christ, and relatively speaking, perhaps our despair is just an itch to the whole body– a minor irritant which will go away, if we don’t focus on it. Or perhaps some other part of the body can reach over and scratch it. Alone, we may not be able to stop the irritation of our life, but WE ARE NOT ALONE.

Every life has ups and downs, high points and low points. Sometimes the low points can be pretty far down – and it seems getting back up is impossible. I had reached such a low point in my life and not many things seemed right. I couldn’t see a way out to happiness, or at least to end the sadness. I “kinda” prayed, but in truth it was usually for others. I had to find a way out of my problems – only I couldn’t. And, yes, thoughts of suicide sometimes flittered in my mind – but I thought I was a pretty sharp guy, and I just hadn’t figured a way out of my problems yet. I had some confidence of success in the future, even if I couldn’t see how. I was still muddling through my unhappiness, trying not to burden others with my sadness, when – of all things – God called to me! Oh, I didn’t hear any voices, but I became convinced that I must do something totally irrational for me: I must go on a pilgrimage.

I’ve always considered myself a fairly smart guy, and friends and business associates’ reactions to my ideas seemed to indicate their agreement. I studied situations and rationally decided what to do or recommend what to be done. I didn’t do things on a whim. But, in truth, I could have come up with a hundred reasons why a pilgrimage made no sense, and virtually no reasons for doing one --- but I was convinced I had to do it. And so I went half way around the world, behind communist border lines, to live in a mud hut for a few days. Insane! Even on the way over, I remember thinking: “This is insane. I’ll spend a few days sight-seeing and then go home.”

Instead, I spent three hours each night in a small church, kneeling on a concrete floor, and I realized in my very being that I was not alone. I prayed over and over to this God I KNEW was there: “OK, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to say. God, you gave me many talents to use, but either they are not enough or I don’t know how to use them.”

“I give up!!!”

“You tell me what to do. You tell me where to go. You tell me what to say. I promise you here and now, I will stop living my life – it’s Yours now. Tell me.”

“I give up!!!”

Looking back, I can see that where my own thoughts at that time were leading me to was one conclusion: I wanted to end things. Only unlike some of my fleeting thoughts of suicide, I felt compelled to let God end things for me, and to lead me from that point. I was asking for an end to my thinking that I knew all the answers – or had to find them; and end my thinking that I knew the way – or had to find it; and mostly, I was asking for an end to my unhappiness. And it did end, only not in the suicide I might have been headed for, but in a continuation of my life with not me, but God being in charge.

At first it was hard to listen for what God might be telling me, but as I became open to even the smallest opportunities put before me, results happened. I did not have to think of what to do, it was shown to me in opportunities to act. One new thing I found in taking the opportunities that God gave me was that to make me happy, I had to make others happy first. Them, then me – happy. I did seem to know where to go, and more and more opportunities to serve appeared. I did seem to know what to say when – much to my surprise, the right words came. Reflecting on what was happening, I think that was because I wasn’t pausing to use “my great wisdom” to figure out the words. They came, just like I had asked Him to give them to me.

If I was truly open to listening, I found that God was willing to tell me. Tell me how to be happy. And I am.

After I learned how to be happy, twice people I knew came to me with thoughts of suicide. Both were in despair over being unloved – by a husband or a boyfriend. Life was not going on as they thought it should, and so they did not want it to go on at all. They wanted to give up; they wanted the sadness to end. Both knew I had gone through divorce, and yet I appeared happy. I think they spoke to me not because they thought I had any words of wisdom, but rather that they thought I could empathize with their feelings. They just wanted to talk.

I don’t know what words my mouth said to them, but I know they were not my words. God did tell me what to say. I know that part of what I related to them was the discovery I made that being loved by another human being did not lead to happiness. Loving another human being leads to happiness.

God loves us, even if we do not know he exists. He created us, and he knows we exist. And he loves his creation. God’s love is a given.

Other human beings may choose to love us, or not. They have free will. It’s not something we can make happen. Being unhappy because someone does not love us is something we can control --- there are many people who don’t love us; most people don’t even know us. But … But … The human beings WE know, we can choose to love. And making that choice, with our free will, is imitating the choice God made with us. The choice to love. And, as I found out, choosing to love others does bring me happiness, whether I love a little or a lot. I chose to love others, and as a result, I’ve found a way to choose my happiness.

My two friends are still alive, and they have learned what love really is. The series of homilies by Pope John Paul II titled The Theology of the Body explains well what love really is. The solution to our happiness is in realizing that we are part of the Body of Christ, and if we scratch others’ itches, they will scratch ours. Happiness can always be found in our life, we only have to be open enough to let Him show us. Being able to sincerely say: Tell me what to do.

Every morning as I see a beautiful blue sky, the sparkling red clouds, the glorious sun rising and spreading its light – everywhere – I know that God is there, and he loves me. I don’t see a day as starting that I must plan and live through. It’s not about me.

I am not alone.

Neither are you, my friend. Neither are you.