There has been a tragic number of suicides in the Nashville area this past month. I wanted to write a bit on this awful torment with hope that is ripping these beautifully broken people from our world.
No one commits suicide because they are hopeless. They commit suicide to kill the hope that refuses to die inside of them. The hope that comes with each breathe in and breathe out. Hope will not stop fighting to live. It is painful to hope. To hope that we won’t leave lonely with this person again, to hope that there is good in the world, to hope that that good will find us, to hope to find a husband, to hope to have a child through previous miscarriages, to hope that this next surgery will get the cancer out, to hope that I will love being at my job tomorrow, to hope that someone will find me worth being with, to hope that someone will come when I call, to hope that the kids at school won’t make fun of me again. It is painful to hope because the hope can leave us disappointed and heartbroken, the hope can make us feel stupid or like there is something wrong for wanting, like we are misfits or outcasts.
Why would we have this hope for something or in something that never seems to be met, or met fully?
Hope stirs inside of us the need to grieve for all the “not yets” that we experience here on this earth. If we don’t have people that are familiar with grief and that can hold a space to allow us to grieve our hearts, we become sick and we begin to practice hopelessness. We make fun of hope, we turn it into a childish memory that no longer exists for us. Life is mostly mundane, a rhythm of night and day with moments of great splendor and fulfillment but always with a side of sadness for that which is not met.
My hope for you reading this is that you will continue to practice listening with each breathe in and out what the child inside of you is saying, is hoping for, and is needing. That child is dying to be heard in your hopelessness. That child is resilient and will not stop tugging on your shirt to come and play in the field of dreams, where life is tragic and God is faithful. I beckon you to return to how you were made, return to the child inside of you, return to your heart that is beating, pumping oxygen rich blood through your veins, and your lungs which receive deeply and pour out with the faith of the next inhale. There are many stories in there waiting, hoping to be told. Do you want to live or just survive? There is a part of you that wants to live if you are reading this blog. Start a conversation with that part of you today!
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