Sunday was a busy day. I spoke four times and had two book signings all at Lover’s Lane United Methodist Church who hosted the James C and Barbara McCormick Distinguished Speaker Forum and the Tom Shipp Lectures (combined to bring me to Texas). The UMC as a denomination have been among the most receptive to The Shack, partly because there is a deep resonance with its historic Trinitarian theology. Texas hospitality, as has been my consistent experience, was wonderful.
This particular Church began shortly after AA was brought to the city and is a center for recovery help. About 70 12-Step groups are hosted serving on average 2,500 people per month. They are also heavily involved in serving the prisons and this year received the prestigious Governor’s Criminal Justice Volunteer Service Award.
Again, as always, I met beautiful people. Some had recently lost members of their families to disease, accident and suicide. I think that the suicides are often the most devastating, especially if there was no warning and seemingly no reason.
I have come to the conclusion that suicide or attempting suicide is not evidence that a person has hit the bottom, but is more likely a way to avoid and run away from hitting the bottom. Having been there myself, if ‘feels’ like you have hit the bottom, the pain is so overwhelming and terrifying and the justifications for taking your own life seem so real and logical. I actually believed that the world would be a better place if I were not on the planet and that my children and Kim would be better off if I wasn’t around to hurt them. I was so tired, and it hurt so bad that this seemed like a way to make the pain stop. Actually, once I made the decision to leave this life everything calmed down, almost like the dead zone right before a tornado arrives. If it hadn’t been for God showing up in some friends…
I think suicide is the most fundamentally selfish choice a human being can make, even though in the moment you don’t consider or understand the devastation it will leave in its wake. The pain in the family that picks up your pieces is shattering, the guilt for not having saved you seems irredeemable and life is forever altered by your absence. Suicide is the greatest personal act of control, playing god with one’s own life and death. At the same time, I don’t believe that suicide is an impediment to the grace of God, some kind of unpardonable sin as is taught by some religious persuasions. When faced with one’s failures and damage, the choice is ultimately ‘to live’ not a choice to ‘not die’, which won’t be enough over time.
Hitting the bottom is marked by at least three things. First, a person who has hit the bottom stops pointing a finger at others as responsible in part or in whole for the damage and therefore the hurtful decisions that one has made. When my world fell to pieces, my façade crumbled, I didn’t care whose fault it was or who might have contributed to my pain and damage. Even though the process of healing usually includes exploring how others have hurt and damaged us (and forgiving), the only finger pointing was at myself and I had to fully own my ‘stuff’. Second, a person who has hit bottom lets go of control. You no longer dictate your process; instead you give yourself to it and often without contingency into the hands and care of others. I told Scott M (my counselor) the first day we met, “I promise you that I will not leave this process until you tell me I am done.” The third thing is that nothing is kept secret, no hidden stash of information, and no area that cannot be explored.
Jesus often asked the people who came to him, even the blind and lame, “What do you want?” To Jesus it wasn’t obvious and he invited the hurt to enter relationship and participate in the processes of their own freedoms. It is the first question in the Gospel of John, directed at John the Baptist’s disciples who had come to Jesus.
Regarding the hurt places of the soul, I think there are many of us who would rather hold on to the certainty of our pain and damage than the uncertainty of healing and freedom. Our pain becomes our identity and ‘change’ the enemy. God has come to us and removed many of the bars of our prisons and yet we still cling to the one bar that remains, gripped with white-knuckled intensity. When that moment comes, may we hear the still small voice whispering in our ears, “Daughter of Zion, free yourself.”
