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.

The rest of the story

I’ve loved this photo from the first time I saw it. The facial expressions. The carefree nature of the subject. The absolute joy that just radiates from the entire scene. I told the story of how this photo came about in a recent Facebook post. The story of how Clayton was trying to run under a friend who was swinging and didn’t get out of the way fast enough and got knocked down.  That’s the story of why Clayton is on the ground and why his boyfriend Kam is laughing so hard he can’t stand up, and why Danny is smiling and why Will is stumbling away the way that he is. But the meaning behind this photo is about so much more than just that story, and I have known since Saturday night when I saw it that I needed to write about it, but just hadn’t taken the time to pull the words from my head and put them on the written page. It wasn’t until the meeting of our Open Hearts group last night that I realized I didn’t know all the meaning of that photo.

When Clayton first told us, several months ago, that he was interested in a boy he knew from the youth theatre group he was involved in, my reaction was both happy for him that he had found someone in whom he was interested, and also apprehensive because the boy was African American. Not because I care, but because I know there are some who will.  I had come to accept the fear that went with the idea of how people might react to Clayton being involved in a same sex relationship. When I realized that his first relationship might also be an interracial one, I wanted to laugh out loud. The kid has never done anything the easy way. I don’t know why I thought his dating life would be any different. I told him that the more conservative members of his family who might be able to come to terms with his being in a same sex relationship just might not be able to handle the interracial one. And then I did what I should have done, which was warn him of the risks and the potential heartbreak of this difficult road he was about to walk, and then wish him well on the journey.

Kam’s mother wasn’t as immediately supportive. She had difficulty with accepting that her son was gay, and so Clayton and Kam decided to just be friends and forget any potential romance, and hope that in time she would come around. It was months later, when they again were cast in a show together and began to spend more time together again that they realized their interest in one another had never gone away and had in fact only grown stronger. While it initially seemed Kam’s mother was more open, they realized in time that nothing had changed. I learned so much about these two boys and their maturity and their grace in this situation. I could not have been more proud if I had tried about how both of them handled the challenges that her disapproval presented. After a very difficult period, she finally agreed to let them date, and they began doing so with her approval. Clayton had long hoped that Kam would be able to go to his homecoming dance with him, but it wasn’t until that actual night that he, or I, fully believed it was going to happen.

The day of the dance, Kam had to work, and did not get off in time to be able to join Clayton and the rest of his group of friends for photos. He was able to join them at the restaurant during their dinner together before the dance, and the plan was for me to take the two of them back to the park to take photos together and then to take them to the dance to meet the rest of the group already there. When I mentioned, to two of the other moms who were driving, the apprehension I had about them walking into the dance by themselves, their reaction was immediate. They would simply bring all the kids back to the park with Clayton and Kam for the photos so they could all walk in together.

And so as we went back to the park for the second set of photos of the evening, all the kids came. And as they were waiting for Clayton and Kam to finish with their photos, some of the boys began to swing. And after the photos were taken, Clayton and Kam joined in the fun, because as big as all these boys are, at heart they are still just little kids sometimes. And when the swinging was done, and when the dust from Clayton’s fall was dusted off, all the kids loaded back into the car, and we headed to the dance where all 16 of these big kids, grades 9 through 12, walked together into the dance, supporting their friend and his boyfriend, walking into a small town high school in small town Texas.

And it didn’t matter to any one of those kids that Clayton and Kam were gay, or that Clayton was white and that Kam was black. What mattered to them was that Clayton was their friend, and Kam was awfully nice and an awful lot of fun, and that they all got to spend the evening together dancing, after an unexpected but joyful trip back to the park.

This was the story that I had to tell on Saturday night about this photo.

And then last night I learned, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”

Having a gay child presents its own sets of fears and worries of hatred and violence directed against him because of who he dates and may someday marry. Having a gay child in an interracial relationship in conservative small town Texas? Well that’s just about enough to make a mama bear more than a little scared. And truthfully, I was feeling a bit of that about the homecoming dance. We are so fortunate to have some amazing allies serving as teachers and counselors within our high school, and so I asked one of them, a member of our Open Hearts Ministry, if he was going to be a chaperone at the dance. Initially his response was “not if I can help it.” But when I told him that Clayton was going to be taking Kam to the dance, he changed his response without hesitation to “I wouldn’t miss it.” And the level of comfort that knowledge gave to my mama heart was substantial. And then on Thursday, he told me that something unavoidable had come up that was causing he and his wife to have to go out of town for the weekend, and so he wasn’t going to be able to be there as planned. My stomach dropped. I hadn’t realized how apprehensive I actually was and how much I was depending on his safe presence there until that moment. He asked if it was okay for him to talk to someone else about being a stand-in for him as a safe adult for Clayton and Kam, and I told him yes, and asked him to let me or Clayton know who it was. He sent me a message a little later in the day telling me the teacher he had found, a particular favorite of the kids, because his genuine love and care for them is so obvious.

I got messages from the teacher in our Open Hearts ministry both before the dance asking me to relay his and his wife’s support for Clayton and Kam, and during the dance, asking me to let them know after the dance that everything went okay. The only stories I heard from the dance were of fun, and glitter, and dancing so much that the sweat was profuse. These kids were a sweaty mess when they showed up for after-dance pancakes, y’all. I asked Clayton if there had been any issues, and he told me no. I sent a photo of the happy, tired and sweaty couple to the teacher, understanding that his relief was as great as mine.

Then at our Open Hearts meeting last night, that teacher told me a part of the story I did not previously know. He had spoken with the teacher who had covered for him at the dance to ask if there had been any issues and what the teacher told him was this: He had been keeping a watch on Clayton all night and at one point, when he went to check on him, he couldn’t find him anywhere. So he asked one of the senior girls in Clayton’s group of friends where Clayton was. Her response was why do you want to know? He told her he was just checking to make sure that he was okay, and she assured him he didn’t need to worry that they, his group, had him.

And indeed they did. Not just at that moment, but at every point during that day, and honestly, at every point in Clayton’s coming out journey up to this point.  Because, you see, that girl and one of the boys in this photo, they were the first people that Clayton came out to when he was beginning to question his sexuality and who he was. They were the first people he came out to when he realized without doubt, a year and a half later, that he was gay. He trusted them with this part of himself before even trusting his family. And at every step along the way, they have supported him and loved him and had his back. They had him, as this girl told the teacher, this past Saturday night. But the truth is, they’ve had him for the past 4 years.

As a parent, you hope that your children find good friends who will lead them to make good decisions in the treacherous growing up years. You hope that they find good friends who will love them and support them and be a listening ear for them when they need it. You hope that they find good friends who will make the often difficult years of middle school and high school just a bit easier to bear.

Sometimes you are blessed beyond all measure that the friends they make will become family to them in a way beyond what you could ever imagine or hope. Friends who give them the confidence that they are loved and valued for who they are. Friends who give them the confidence that allows them to have the smiles you see in the photo here. That allows them to set aside the worries of hate or violence or negativity, and lets them enjoy a time of being a teenager spending time with people they care about, doing things that they love. Friends who are an integral part of their faith journey. Because these kids I’m talking about? They are all a part of his church youth group. A group of kids who understand that when Jesus said love your neighbor as yourself, he meant love everybody. Regardless of your gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnic background or skin color. A group of kids who I have no doubt are going to change this world in a powerful and important way. And I am beyond blessed to know each and every one of them. I know without doubt that they have made a positive impact on Clayton that will last a lifetime.

But the rest of the story? They’ve had the same impact on me.