Suicide Awareness Month...a conflicted heart

September is Suicide Awareness Month

Plastered throughout Facebook are #stopthestigma, bring awareness, and so many other really good ideas...

But my heart is conflicted....

I don't know how to stop suicide.

I am in a junior high classroom, surrounded by kids with brokenness....kids who think this is the entire book instead of a chapter...

Andrea couldn't see an end in site.

I don't know how to stop suicide....

But I can help stop the stigma.

Here's where it's oh so hard....How do we talk about it? Yet never, never, NEVER give permission. How do I help stop the stigma, but not reinforce that there is a better place? Because there is....but not yet!

God says, not yet.

But Satan whispers a lie...

Here's another thing, especially in the Christian world...suicide is the "unpardonable sin."

Is there such a thing?

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Of all the questions I've asked God, screamed out, silently sobbed;

Is Andrea in heaven? has not been one of them.

Not once. NEVER.

I absolutely know, as deeply as I know there is a God, I KNOW she is in heaven.

She is singing with those hands raised, but fully raised in complete abandon! Not the half raise that I was accustomed to seeing her in worship; the quiet, personal surrender.

In heaven hers is complete abandon! This internet image (not of Andrea, but a striking resemblance!) is how I imagine her.

And she is dancing joyously...as she was created to do.

Her last written words were to all of us:

"I'm sorry. I love you."

Followed by,

"I pray God you keep your covenant with me one more time."

You see, as she made this choice, we was searching after God. She was not drawing away. In her brokenness, she was trying. She was begging. She was reading the bible. She was praying. She was probably closer to God than at any other time in her life....

And yet....

How do we make sense of this?

For me, it makes me realize that Satan is powerful. And for whatever reason, he was fighting for her soul.

If we are honest, we should all realize that we can be oh so intimate with God, and yet, sin....

And there is no unpardonable sin.

Even if you have lost someone who seemed far from God, God hears the heart.

Only God knows the innermost cry of our hearts. Better than we know ourselves.

It seems to me, suicide is the loudest cry for God that I can imagine.

Unfortunately, Satan is right there....with those, oh so convincing whispers, that it's never going to change, it's never going to get better.

But, here's the thing;

God is bigger..... this is just a chapter....let God use the entire story.

I Cor 13:12: Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.