Feed my sheep

They come before me each day, the parents, and children. Frightened, ashamed, angry, or sad; sometimes all of the above all at the same time. Most of them, just hurting and broken souls, doing the best they know how to ease the pain they feel. 

To each of them I say, look around at all these faces here on this screen. Each of the faces you see here represents a person who wants you to succeed. We will support you in every way that we can. But we can’t do the work for you. That’s something you have to do yourself. And I send them on their way at the end of each court hearing, hoping they find within themselves the strength, courage, and conviction to do the hard work that needs to be done, and that they find the right people to walk alongside them to provide positive support, and healthy accountability. I hope they find the community they will need to fight the battles they need to fight and conquer the demons who hold them hostage. 

Yet all too often I hear stories like from a father last week. He doesn’t have anybody. He’s trying to do it alone. He has no friends. What is left unsaid is the fact that he is trying to do it alone because the people in his life who are his family, and the people he once would have called friends, are ones that would cause him to stumble and fall further than he has. He has no one healthy in his life to turn to when he needs support. 

If only everyone who came into my court had more than just the people on the zoom screen to care if they healed; if only each of them had a support system of healthy loving people who they could turn to when times are dark. People who could lift them up when they have fallen, give them a little shove when their motivation needs a boost, be a person they could depend on to help them when they can’t do on their own what needs to be done. 

And I question where is the Church? If Jesus taught Peter the way to show love to him was by feeding his sheep, where are the shepherds? Why are there so many who proclaim to be Christians who respond with closed fists rather than open hands, to those who falter? 

Could it be that some of you have been called to walk alongside those who have nobody to walk with them? To show the love of Jesus in real and practical ways, by loving Jesus in the way he directed Peter to do. By feeding his sheep. 

If you have a love for children, and desire to be a safe adult to a child coming from a hard place, and a desire to support a family as they do the hard work to recover and heal, might you become a CASA volunteer?  

If you have available space and a willingness to care for a child in your home for a time, might you consider providing a temporary home to a child through the Safe Families for Children Program? If you have a desire to provide a home for a longer time, might you consider providing a family either temporarily through foster care, or forever through adoption? 

If you don’t have time, but have extra monetary resources, might you consider donations of money or gift cards to your local children’s advocacy center, CPS agency, CASA agency, or an agency like Embrace, which provides practical assistance to families caring for foster children. 

If you are a pastor or other church leader, could your church host a support group such as Celebrate Recovery, or NA/AA? 

If you have the gift of listening and support and could be a positive connection for a parent, might you volunteer with New Day Services? 

There are so many ways for the church to be the hands and feet of Jesus to hurting people. Might you be the somebody to a hurting person, so they no longer have to do it all alone? 

Might you walk alongside a person who has lost their way, and be the shepherd Jesus calls us to be? 

May I be that voice

A friend posted on Facebook yesterday about her fear for her husband, a black male, and her fear for the entire black community from being targeted just for being who they are. 

She said, in part, this: “To all our non-melanin friends, stop just saying “I’m sorry” or “I hate it” and start being a voice.””

That stopped me in my tracks. And after a moment of thought, I commented this: “I am a person of words. And yet, in this time, I find it hard to speak because I have no words. Because how do I have the words to speak into something so deep. And so, often I stay silent because I am afraid to say the wrong ones, and by doing so, cause more damange than if I just kept my mouth shut. So thank you for  this. Thank you for making me question my silence. For giving me the impetus and the bravery to try to put the feelings that are in my heart into words, so that even though they may not be the right thing, they are at least some thing.”

And then I spent the rest of the day in back to back hearings, listening to the sad stories of children who have been harmed by their parents, and by the system, parents and their struggles with addiction and other demons. And amidst that heartbreak which soaks into my soul and saddens my heart, I thought of the words of my friend from that morning, which has done the same. 

And I tried to find the words to speak into the injustice and the inhumanity of yet another black male whose life was taken because he was born with skin darker than mine. And yet none would come.

Because it is hard for me to know how to speak into something that I cannot understand. 

I cannot understand how in 2020 we live in a country where it is all too common and often unquestioned when a person of color loses their life because of the color of their skin. 

I cannot understand the fear of each day sending a black son or a black daughter or a black husband into this work and fear that they might not come home because of the actions of someone who regards them as less than because their skin color is darker than mine.

As I continued this morning to try to find the words to speak, I came across the following quote by Ben Franklin: ”Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”

And I thought, yes, that’s it.  And then I thought yes, that is it. But no, that actually isn’t it at all.

Because while I may be unaffected in that my husband or my sons are highly unlikely to ever be stopped by the police because of the color of their skin, or chased after and shot because they are jogging in a neighborhood they are judged to not belong in, or deprived of air to the point of death by a police officer kneeling on their throat, over their begging and pleading for air, I am affected each time that happens to someone else.

Each time a person of color is assaulted, or killed, or abused because their skin contains more melanin than mine, I am affected.

Each time that happens and I remain silent because I lack the right words to say, I am complicit in the creation of a society that allows for their death.

Each time I suppress my outrage and my grief because I feel that I have no right to speak into something that I do not understand, I tacitly approve of the actions that are taken.

Each time I fail to speak out because I am afraid of offending someone, or appearing that I am not supportive of law enforcement, or that I am being unpatriotic, I lose a piece of my humanity.

My friend was right. It is long past time for me, and all of my other non-melanin friends to start being a voice. 

To become informed on those things that my white privilege has protected me from knowing.

To learn from those who do know rather than having the arrogance to believe that I can understand things I never truly can.

To risk doing the wrong thing, for the sake of doing some thing.

May I be that voice.

Leaving the fishes

About a year and a half ago, I felt a call to ministry. I wasn’t sure exactly what that ministry would look like, but I was pretty sure that it involved seminary. So I started looking into seminary programs. But in the process of that decision to go back to school, one of the things that I had to work through was whether I was going for the right reasons.  

The timing could not have been worse. We have a kid in college which is costing a significant amount of money, with another one not too far behind. After many years of being self-employed with a somewhat flexible schedule, I was working a full time job with very limited flexibility. I mean, really the timing for this kind of new commitment could not have been worse.

But then I found this school that just felt right to me, with a program that seemed to be designed just for me, and they not only thought I would fit in well there and let me in, but they made me a financial aid offer I would have been crazy to refuse. So I thought okay, clearly this is happening in part right now so that I realize that this is God’s plan rather than mine, because clearly the timing is not one I would have chosen, which must mean that it is God’s.

I mean seriously, it would have been far more convenient and made much more sense for God to have done this before I took the job I had at the DA’s office, representing CPS, because it would have been much more natural timing and less disruptive of my life, but obviously it was God’s timing now and not then. And that’s where I left that thought really. I began seminary, and I loved it, and I realized quickly that if I truly followed the call to full time ministry that there would come a time when I wouldn’t be able to continue to work the job I had on a full time basis and go to school the way that I wanted and needed to. I verbalized that to my boss, to my people at work, to Mike. And then I kind of left that thought too, because although I knew without doubt that this part of my career and life was wrapping up, I didn’t like I was being called to make a change too quickly.

And then about a month into seminary, I was listening to my pastor’s sermon. She talked about Peter and his first encounter with Jesus. She told of the massive catch that they had brought in, and how this was likely the culmination of a lifetime of work, the best work day of his life, the pinnacle of his career if you will, and he walked away from it to follow Jesus. 

I had heard that story countless times in my life. But until that morning I never identified it with myself and my circumstances. I realized that the timing of seminary right then wasn’t just so that I would realize this was God’s plan rather than my own. I mean I would have struggled more with that question if this had come up before I took the job I had. For probably 5-10 years before taking that position, I would have a meltdown a minimum of twice a year, telling Mike I just couldn’t do this work anymore. It was too hard, too lonely, too stressful, too much. If I had been given the calling and the opportunity then to go to seminary and change careers, I would have jumped on that opportunity without hesitation, if for no other reason than to go a different direction. And I would have questioned whether it was God’s plan or mine because I was so desperate to try something new.

And then I took the job with the Grayson County DA’s office as the CPS attorney. And it has given me so much. It has given me the opportunity to finish the job I started 25 years ago but ended up leaving sooner than I wanted for personal reasons. It gave me closure that I desperately needed but didn’t think I would ever have. It gave me confidence in my abilities and my worth as an attorney, which I had lost somewhere along the way.

I really like my job. And honestly, I am really good at it. People in the DA’s office, in my CPS office, and in the courts, like me. And I love them. I feel I am making a very positive difference in the way in which the child welfare system works in Grayson County. I am filling a very definite need, and I am doing it very well.

And yet, despite all that, I realized when I heard that sermon about Peter that I was ready to walk away from all of it. Like with Peter, you could say that this was the culmination of what I had worked for my entire career. To be successful, to be loved, and to be valued and of value. It doesn’t get much better than this. And I was ready to drop my nets, leave all my fishes, and follow Jesus.

I didn’t know how it was going to work or when it was going to work, but I did not doubt that it would work. And I realized that God’s timing for this call to ministry wasn’t just so that I would know for sure that this was from God rather than from me, but it was so that God would know whether I was truly all in, truly willing to walk away from everything to follow God’s call. And I realized that in the process of placing that call on me at the time that God did, God had first chosen to change me and grow me and develop me and give me the confidence I would need to walk this next journey. And at the same time, God allowed me to finish things I started so many years ago. 

God had allowed me to overcome bad decisions, shame, and pain, to grow into just the person that I needed to be to follow the call that had been placed inside me. 

And as I followed that call through seminary, my mind expanded and my eyes opened more widely and my heart, as did with the Grinch, grew about three sizes. 

As my heart opened wider to others, as I began to see more clearly the value in others, I also began to see the value in myself, not for what I could do for others, but in who God made me to be.

As I learned my value, I grew more strong. 

As I grew more strong, I grew more gentle. 

As I grew more gentle, I began seeing the worth in people who do not always see it in themselves because society or the church or their inner demons or past trauma have told them it’s not there. 

And that changed everything about how I practiced law, how I did my job. How I looked at people. How I treated people. 

And I thought, well God is just showing me how to see people through the eyes of a pastor rather than through the eyes of a lawyer.  

And in the midst of this, in the midst of figuring out where this ministry call might lead me, I got a text from an old friend. Someone I have known for many years. First as a fellow church member and then professionally. She told me that a child protection court was being created in my area and I needed to apply for the position of associate judge. My response to her was immediate. I told her I appreciated her thinking of me, but I didn’t think that was God’s plan for me. She told me that she didn’t want to interefere with God’s plan for my life, but she really thought I was perfect for this position. Because I trust this friend’s discernment, I told her that I would keep an open mind, and I would think about it, and I would pray about it, but I didn’t think I would change my mind. And over the next few weeks, I did think and pray about it. And I started to talk to other people about it. People I trusted to tell me the truth. And as I began to think that maybe this was the direction that God was leading me to, I got some very clear and unexpected trail markers that confirmed that.

And so I made the decision to apply, and have recently been appointed to the position.

It turns out that during this time that I thought God was teaching me to see people through the eyes of a pastor rather than through the eyes of a lawyer, what was actually happening was that God was teaching me to see them instead through the eyes of God rather than humans. And that is a perspective that I think I will need very much in this new position. Because the truth is, the people that come before me, not just the children, but the parents with all they have done, need to have someone see them as God does. As people who may be broken and damaged, but who are worthy. And who have the potential to be so much more than life has made them. And they need someone to help them see that in themselves. 

So it is with great sadness that I turned in my resignation today for the position that has given so much to me these past three years. But it is with great excitement and honor that I prepare to step into this new one.

God is good. All the time, God is Good.

Where did I see God?

Where did I see God today?

This is something I have asked myself each day of this trip. The answer has been different each day. Sometimes it has been in several ways. Sometimes only one. 

The second question I ask is what one thing will I remember from this day. That usually involves something meaningful someone said, as opposed to where I saw God, which typically has to do with something that I felt. 

And truthfully, for the most part, what I have taken from this trip prior to today was some feeling, but mostly head knowledge. Lots and lots of head knowledge. Things to process. Things that I have had difficulty wrapping my brain around. Difficult things that I never knew and can’t believe I did not. But head knowledge.

Today, it hit me in the heart.

We went to a Methodist church which for the past 3 years has been the main church host home for many persons facing hearings to determine if their pleas for asylum will be met or whether they will be deported back to the countries that they risked so much to flee, because the life they had there was worse than the risk they took to escape.

The first tears came when the young pastor spoke of the start of this program, initiated by a letter from ICE to the area bishop, seeking help from area churches to care for people because ICE had run out of space to house them. He spoke of how the first refugees, primarily mothers and children, released from detention while the fathers were held, came at the beginning of the Advent season, and how the timing was not lost on him in its spiritual meaning and implications. How the expectation of the church volunteers was that the primary thing that the refugees would want was food. But how they soon realized the children just wanted the chance to run and play, as is true of all children everywhere. And the mothers just wanted to sleep, after having been on foot and on guard for more hours than the volunteers knew. He told of volunteers who spent hours holding babies they had only just met, handed to them by mothers so relieved to have a faith community to care for them that they were finally able to rest. 

He told of the fellowship enjoyed between the refugees and the parishioners before and after church services, in sharing coffee, though they often did not speak each others languages and only awkwardly smiled at each other as strangers sharing common space and experience often do. 

He spoke of the lessons they learned that this wasn’t a situation of people in better situations helping those less fortunate, but an experience of people simply living life together in a very complex world.

He told of the dichotomy on Ash Wednesday of the receiving of the ashes. His parishioners much by rote habit, as if on autopilot. The refugees, he explained, were different. They were trembling, as they came to him to receive the ashes. “I don’t know what their narrative was,” he explained, “if it was that their suffering had made them understand so much more clearly the suffering of Jesus, or if it was just their gratitude at having survived the journey and made it some place safe, but they brought the realness of what it is to die to Christ.”

The church houses the migrants short term until they are able to be on their way to a host home, where they will stay until they have a court hearing to determine whether or not they will be granted asylum or deported back to the country from which they fled. 

From the size of the church, I first assumed it was a pretty large congregation. As the conversation went on, the young pastor told us that their membership is only 189 and they regularly worshipped around 100 on Sunday mornings. And yet, since December 2016 when they first began to house these migrants brought to them by ICE, 12,000 people: men, women, and children, have come through their doors. 

Even as he spoke of the undertaking, you could see the amazement he still felt. That this ministry, that they did not ask for, that they did not go looking for, that was so much bigger than they should have been able to accomplish, has worked. Not because of them, but because God has provided, and they have been obedient to answer this need they should not be able to meet.

And then he took us to where the people were. As we walked in, the parents looked at us in obvious wariness. A group of 13, only four had skin darker than mine. Those in our group who spoke Spanish began to speak to the Latino migrants. I looked to the left and saw two little girls. One maybe five who we learned had fled with her mother and father from Kyrgyzstan. She was playing with a little girl around four from central Mexico. They did not speak the same language, their facial features and skin color were  not the same. And yet in this most unlikely of places, they had become friends. Tears filled my eyes and I had to turn away before they fell. I sat and listened for a time to the young pastor as he answered questions about the ministry. And then something caught my attention. I saw a bulletin board, completely covered with artwork from the children who had come through the shelter. As I stood looking at the pieces, most in a language I did not know, I picked up names of countries. The Spanish word for God. And the tears that had filled my eyes as I watched the two young girls, began to stream down my face. One of the other students, who I have grown close to on this trip, came to stand beside me and look. Unlike my silent tears, her sobs shook her visibly. I put my arm around her shoulder, and we both stood there together and cried. Two privileged white women, their hearts broken by the pain of little children we would never know.

So the thing that I will remember yesterday, and where I saw God? They were the same. As for me? I will never be the same. And for that, I am grateful.

The next thing

I am spending part of the day today at the public library, working on the final paper for the class I am taking this semester. As I sat down at the table, I looked out the window and saw this squirrel scampering up the tree outside. 

Squirrels, if you have ever really paid attention to them in a tree, are typically incredibly confident and surefooted, jumping from branch to branch with incredible assurance that they are going to land safely on their feet. 

But this little guy, after working his way up the trunk of the tree, stepped out onto one of the branches, and just stopped, and dropped to his little furry tummy, and wrapped his legs around the branch and just lay there for a moment like he was holding on for dear life. He was breathing so hard I could see his lungs inflate and deflate through his fur. The look in his eyes said, “I made it, now I just need a minute to catch my breath because holy crap, I’m tired and that was rough.” 

I sat and watched him for probably a full minute, just holding on for dear life, thinking that I had never seen a squirrel in a tree act like that and wondering if he might be sick. I took out my phone to take a photo, but by the time I got the camera app pulled up, he was already back on his feet. I caught this photo just before he was off again, scampering with that usual squirrel confidence, leaping with abandon from branch to branch, where he was soon joined by a friend, chasing and running, with moves so fast it was hard to imagine how they stayed on their feet.

For just a moment there, I felt a kinship with the squirrel. I identified with him as he lay there, trying to catch his breath, and just taking a moment to recover just a bit from the strenuous task he had just endured, and preparing himself for all that would come next.

Sometimes I think I, and probably all of us, live like that squirrel most of our days. Running from one thing to the next, following a hard climb up a tree by an immediate leaping from branch to branch at high speeds, with abandon, without considering whether we might miss one in our haste, and with no regard to the scenery we are missing as our eyes are so focused on what is directly in front of us, and the place where our feet need next to land. Perhaps we should all take a bit of a lesson from this little guy. 

To understand that is okay, and even healthy from time to time, to stop and lie down, to catch our breath, and to just be. 

To honor the feelings of “I made it, now I just need a minute to catch my breath because holy crap, I’m tired and that was rough.”

To take a minute to feel the wind in our hair, and the sun on our skin, and to appreciate where we have been, the journey we have been on, and to rest a minute before we leap back into the race to the next thing.

Wearing down the rough edges

My friend Sharon and I took a 36 hour trip to South Austin on Sunday and Monday to visit my dear friend Sally whom I haven’t seen in more than a year and a half. We spent the afternoon in Gruene, which is one of my favorite places in Texas, and I decided to make a detour to Canyon Lake before heading back to Sally’s house for the night because Sharon had never been there. We hiked down to the water and sat for probably close to an hour just digging through rocks and shells and listening to the water as it washed upon the shore.

Most of the rocks were pretty rough with sharp corners and uneven feel. But I came across this one, shaped a bit like a heart, and incredibly smooth to the touch. I commented to Sally how smooth it was and how when I saw rocks like that, I always wondered at all the places that they had been that had brought them to this condition.

It made me think of how symbolic that rock is to our own lives. We all start out pretty rough, with sharp corners and an uneven feel. If we stay far enough back from the waves that carry us and take us to places different than where we started, our edges remain sharp and our exterior rough and uneven. But if we get close enough to the water to get tossed about, we get thrown into situations where we bang up against other rocks that are hard, uneven, and unyielding. Along the way we get a bit beat up. A bit tossed about. A bit scuffed and worn. But we also get our sharp corners softened. Our exterior worn smoother and more even. We become more pleasant to the eye and appealing to the hold, even with our appearances a bit more scarred perhaps than when we started.

Certainly the process of wearing off those sharp corners isn’t an easy or a comfortable one. And yet what’s left on the other side is something far more pleasing than what we started as. And just might cause someone else to wonder at all the places we have been to give us the appearance that we have.

Be unapologetically you

As I was sitting in the lounge at the Divinity School last night before the class I’m taking, I started talking to one of the other seminary students in my class. She asked me where I had gotten the shirt that I was wearing. I told her I had bought it for the Pride parade this past weekend but had been unable to make the parade because of some health issues. I told her about taking Clayton to the Pride parade last year and the amazing experience we had marching with the school. She looked at me and she said, your son is so lucky to have you support him. Of course I support him, I told her. Not supporting him because he is gay would be like not supporting him because he has blue eyes instead of brown.

I’ve thought of that conversation a lot today. You see, today is National Coming Out Day. Imagine having a day set aside for the specific purpose of recognizing the difficulty of proclaiming who you are?

But difficult it can be. A friend posted the following statistics earlier: 

·     40% of homeless teens in the United States who came out were thrown out by their parents onto the streets

·     4 in 10 LGBTQ youth (42%) say the community in which they live is not accepting of LGBTQ people

·     LGBTQ youth are 2x more likely as their peers to say they have been physically assaulted, kicked or shoved at school

·     26% of LGBTQ youth say their biggest problems involve not be accepted by their families, bullying at school and fear of coming out

·     LGBTQ youth seriously contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of heterosexual youth

·     LGBTQ youth are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to heterosexual youth.

Those statistics break my mama heart. But most importantly, they break my human heart.

Nobody should be afraid to tell the truth of who they are.

Nobody should fear being bullied or assaulted because of the person God made them to be.

Nobody should have to couch surf or sleep on the streets because their parents reject them because they don’t fit the mold of what their parents expect.

Nobody should feel so hopeless because of rejection, or abuse, or hopelessness and helplessness that the only option they see is to attempt to take their own life.

Do I support my gay son the same as I would if he wasn’t gay? Absolutely.

Do I affirm his identity as a perfect child of God who was fearfully and wonderfully made, in the image of God and with a purpose? I most certainly do.

Do I celebrate the relationship that he has with his boyfriend, who is a really great kid who makes him happy? Most definitely.

Will I be his biggest cheerleader in this life as he takes the steps to advocate for himself and for others who may not have the same support that he has at home? With my very last breath.

I pray for a day where it isn’t necessary to have a National Coming Out Day. Where people just accept people as they are, without explanation.

Where no child has to fear being who they are, wherever they are: at home, at school, at church, in society.

Where we let people be who they are, without apology or explanation. As God made them to be. 

Nobody rides for free

Most days I spend in court have their share of emotion. 

More often than not, the emotion is negative. Most days I can shake it off and move on, but there are days I have struggled not to cry in court. When the facts of a case, or the circumstances of a child, or the sheer heartbreak of a situation, or the feeling of helplessness to fix an issue that so badly needs to be fixed, just overwhelm me and the emotion becomes too much to handle. Those are the days that I try not to cry.

Many of the people that I work with, both the parents and the children, have histories and traumas in their lives that would bring you to your knees.

There are days where the weight of all that history and trauma just weighs too heavy, the pain is so raw, and the reality of someone’s life is so painful, and so heartbreaking, that it has a presence so palpable it can almost be touched.

And then there are the rare, but oh so special days that the tears come not because things are bad, but because they are so very good, because something beautiful and happy and right is happening.

And then there are days, like today, that all those things exist all in the same space. And when that happens, keeping the tears in is a challenge. Because the space that is occupied by that much emotion, by that much trauma, by that much of what is so beautiful and so heartwrenching in this job, it is sacred space. 

I posted awhile back about the hopes that I had for a young couple in their journey to become healthy and sober for their little baby. I spoke of how we were all cheering them on so hard. Of how much we all needed them to succeed because we all so badly needed a win. We all desperately needed to see, for once, love win over addiction. Today, I got to have my worker testify about all the hard work this young family had done over the past 10 months. About all the progress they have made. About how healthy they have become. And at the end of that hearing, I got to hear the judge approve for this beautiful little redheaded baby girl to go home to her parents who are now healthy and whole and ready to provide her with the home that she deserves. And as the mama cried tears of joy, and the father beamed with pride, I had to bite my lip and think of other things, to keep my own tears from leaking down my face.

In this same morning, I watched a mother struggle to put her words together in a way that made sense, as it was so clear to everyone watching in the courtroom that she was yet again a loser in the battle she has been fighting against methamphetamines, and against the many layers of trauma that she has experienced in her own life. This same mother who I sat in a room with not two months ago, struggling with my own tears that day, as I assured her, through tears of her own, that she was worthy despite the decisions she had made and despite the things that had been done to her. 

My morning wrapped up with the words of a 15 year old, as she read a letter to the judge that she had written to him, asking for yet another chance to live with a family friend, because this time she could really be good. This young woman who, in her short life, has been removed from her birth family because of drug abuse and sexual trauma, and who has been given up by her adoptive mother because she doesn’t know how to handle the behaviors that trauma causes, and she got tired of trying. This young woman who, while physically an adult, is so clearly still just a scared little girl inside. A little girl who just wants to belong to someone who loves her enough to say I’m not walking away, and neither are you.

So as I sit in my home this evening, after a difficult day, mentally preparing for more of the same tomorrow, I can’t help but think of the lives that touched mine today. And I lift up a prayer for each of them. And for each of us who will work with them. That we never forget the humanity in them. Or within ourselves. That we never forget their stories. Or our own. 

Holding up the hands of those who are tired

I read earlier this week on Twitter of the death by suicide of a young pastor, who had himself been a leading charge about speaking out on the importance of talking about mental illness, depression, and suicide, and destigmatizing the shame that comes with that for many people.

Sometimes we speak most passionately about the things that hit closest to home for us because of our own experiences, or those of the ones we love.

I was shocked to see some very harsh comments from a person, directed at the person posting about the pastor’s death, with their opinion that the writer should not be saying the pastor was in Heaven when he was not, because he had committed suicide. Many people responded to the harshness of that response, and the person commented again, saying that the knowledge that a person wouldn’t go to Heaven if they committed suicide might keep someone else who was considering the act from doing so.

I had to read that comment twice because my first response was, surely one person cannot be that clueless. Turns out he is, I guess, because it read the same the second time I read it.

My first thought was I hope nobody you love ever struggles with depression or suicidal ideations because they are surely not going to get the support that they need from you. My second thought was I really hope somebody you love struggles with depression or suicidal ideations so that you will catch a clue that you have NO idea what you are talking about, and the damage that you are capable of doing by saying the things that you say.

I’ve been saddened each time since that I have seen someone post an article about the death of the young pastor. Then on Twitter again a few days later, I saw reference to attacks by another person on the dead pastor, this time by a fellow pastor. I just saw red at that point for so many reasons. First of all, to my knowledge, neither of these know-it-alls has been to Heaven and taken an inventory of who all was there and how they died. Neither has had a face to face conversation with God about this very issue. And certainly neither one of them has EVER had a deep, honest, and vulnerable discourse with a person who has struggled with persistent thoughts of suicide, because if they had, they would understand without question that it is exhausting and heartbreaking and that when that person has fought with everything they have to resist those thoughts.

Somehow I doubt that the people who say that a person who commits suicide will not go to Heaven would also say that someone who chooses to discontinue cancer treatment or someone who declines extraordinary lifesaving measures will not. And yet, because the disease we are talking about is one of a psychological rather than an obvious physiological one, people treat it as if it’s not the same.

A number of years ago there was a mother in my county who, suffering severe postpartum depression, cut off the arms of her baby. As the investigation unfolded, it became clear that prior to that event, she had struggled with post-partum depression to the point of psychosis, with both her pastor and her husband discouraging her from any type psychological or pharmaceutical intervention. They both felt that if she just prayed more or had more faith, she would be healed. I’m sure that gives her great comfort on the backside of the action that took her child’s life and with which she will have to wake up remembering each day for the rest of her life.

The stigma and shame about mental illness and depression and suicide must stop. In society. In our schools. In our homes. And most of all, in our churches. Our churches should be the places where more than anyplace else, we support each other and hold each other up. Where we talk about hard things, and we do hard things, and we support each other through the good times and the bad. Not a place where we point fingers and place blame and cast shame.

In the book of Exodus there is a story of a battle that Israel was engaged in. In the midst of the battle, Moses took Aaron and Hur, his brother and a close companion, to the top of a hill. As long as Moses held up his hand with the shepherd's rod of God in his hand, Israel would win the battle. But when he lowered his hand, Israel would begin to lose. Soon Moses' hands grew tired. And so Aaron and Hur took a stone and put it under Moses so he could sit down. And then Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses, one on each side of him, so that his hands remained steady despite his weariness, and Israel ultimately prevailed.

As Christ followers, it isn't our job to judge when someone grows too tired to hold up their hands anymore. It's our job to come alongside, place a stone under them so they can sit down, and hold up their hands, and keep them steady, until they are able to hold them again on their own. Because sometimes the battles in life are just to big too fight on our own. Sometimes we need someone else to hold up our hands.