Kaye, a woman who wrote to me
from California after reading
an article I wrote on suicide, lost a sister through suicide, and
almost took her own life, too – three times. When still an infant,
she was almost killed by her mother; later she suffered sexual abuse
at the hands of a man she trusted.
For those of us who survive the ravages of suicide and learn from
our experiences, abundant life is in store. We do not live lives that
are lies. And the shards of what was can be molded into beautiful
pottery. I speak for those who have experienced “the dark night of
the soul” as I have, and have survived to tell about it.
I believed in God through every moment of my long, dark
struggle, and he is the reason I am alive today. I listened to his
voice that night in June 1986 when he said: “Don’t do it. Don’t
commit suicide.” So although I had the syringe full of deadly
drugs at my side, I did not do it. I obeyed God and am very
grateful today that I did. But I was angry, very angry that I had to
live in hell three more years…
We who are (or were) suicidal live with shattered spirits and
souls. To exist with a shattered soul is excruciatingly painful
because we live by going through the motions. We know there
is more there, but we are trapped as if in a giant ice cube…
Depression is a sickness of the soul starved for unconditional
love – the unconditional love that only God can provide. All
people have their dark side, and our love is only conditional;
that’s why we need God. He knows us better than we know
ourselves, and he is still the Great Healer. He has promised us
trouble in life, but he has also promised us joy and peace in the
midst of our trouble and grief.
Yes, prayer is the best help for despair and for suicidally
depressed people. At times, eating – or even just breathing – is
the only prayer they can pray. But God understands that this is
enough of a prayer!
However poor and inadequate prayer may be, it is the only real help
for despair. Even if we think we don’t know how to pray, we can
turn to God. Praying with the psalms can be a help, since the
psalmist often shares our innermost longing and voices it in prayer:
“Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my sighing,” and “In my
anguish I cried to the Lord, and he answered by setting me free.”
Prayer can be a mainstay, even when we despair to the point of
entertaining suicidal thoughts, or when God seems far away. Jane
Kenyon writes:
My belief in God, especially the idea that a believer is part of the
body of Christ, has kept me from harming myself. When I was in
so much pain that I didn’t want to be awake or aware, I’ve
thought to myself, If you injure yourself, you’re injuring the
body of Christ, and Christ has been injured enough.
In
The Adolescent,
Dostoyevsky emphasizes the importance of
praying for those who are desperate.
“How do you look upon the sin of suicide,” I asked Makar…
“Suicide is man’s greatest sin,” he said with a sigh, “but God
alone can judge it, for only God knows what and how much a
man can bear. As for us, we must pray tirelessly for the sinner.
Whenever you hear of that sin, pray hard for the sinner, at least
sigh for him as you turn to God, even if you never knew him –
that will make your prayer all the more effective.”
“But would my prayer be of any help to him since he’s already condemned?”
“Who can tell? There are many – oh, so many! – people
without faith who just confuse the ignorant. Don’t listen to them
because they themselves don’t know where they’re going. A
prayer for a condemned man from a man still alive will reach
God, and that’s the truth. Just think of the plight of a man who
has no one to pray for him. And so, when you pray in the
evening before going to sleep, add at the end, ‘Lord Jesus, have
mercy on all those who have no one to pray for them.’ This
prayer will be heard and it will please the Lord. Also pray for all
the sinners who are still alive: ‘O Lord, who holdest all destinies
in thy hand, save all the unrepentant sinners.’ That’s also a good
prayer.”
As my father wrote in his book
Discipleship:
“It is a great mistake
to think that we can understand our own hearts. We may understand ourselves superficially, but only God really knows our hearts.
Therefore, even if we suffer the severest temptations, trials, and
attacks from the Evil One, we can always turn to God with trust
and great hopes for victory.”
If prayer fails to comfort a suicidal person, we who are close to
him must have faith and believe for him. When someone sinks in
darkness and thinks he is separated from God, he must be assured
that others will pray for him. There is profound protection in the
prayers of others.
Much of the emotional isolation
in modern society is rooted
in our confusion about the real purpose in living: we forget that
our first task is to love God with all our heart and soul, and to love
our neighbor as ourselves. If we took these two great commandments seriously, much loneliness and depression could be averted.
Loving our neighbor is prayer in action, and it is something each of
us can do. I often wonder whether we do not rely too heavily on
experts. When a person is desperate and suicidal, an “expert” may
be the last person he wants to face: after all, who can cope with
analysis or advice when he feels unable even to face himself? Naturally one cannot rule out the use of psychiatry or medication, but
we should not forget that often the simple support of a listening
ear – a friend or family member, pastor or priest – is the best help.
Here is part of a letter I received recently from a mother of three
children:
I was admitted to a psychiatry ward twice, the second time
because of severe depression after the birth of my son. In a sense,
hospitalization removed me from the stressful situation, and I
felt that the personnel there accepted me as I was and did not
expect things of me that I felt unable to do. But long-term help
did not come from hospitalization or medication. It came
through the prayers and love of family and friends.
In dealing with someone with mental illness, I think understanding and accepting that person is the best help. I didn’t find
it easy when someone said to me at that time, “We all have our
down days.” It made me feel she didn’t understand it at all, and
I felt she expected me to somehow pull myself out of this depression, which I simply could not do. You see, I had no control over
how I felt at that time after the birth. I couldn’t laugh, couldn’t
cry, didn’t feel any love for my baby or my husband. It was hell, I
tell you. I felt cut off from God and man.
Basically I couldn’t function. I spent most of my days on my
bed. My mother did a lot for our baby and for me. I felt incapable of doing anything. And that is hard for people to understand; maybe they thought I was just lazy. But slowly I recovered.
I was able to do more, work again gradually, as I got better.
People didn’t really know how to help, although they tried.
But my minister understood. Whenever I told him I couldn’t
pray – and that was a real need for me – he always answered,
“Then I will pray for you.” And that comforted me.
I am thankful for all the prayers that were said for me when
I could see no light at the end of the tunnel. More than that, I
am grateful for the sensitivity toward my situation shown by
those near to me. That was a real form of intercession. For a long
time I believed I would never know joy again, that I would be
trapped in this horrible snare of depression forever. But my husband and my friends believed for me and prayed for me, and I
came through.
There have always been people who suffered the ravages of mental
illness – depressive thoughts, manic tendencies, emotional instability,
overwhelming anxieties, and delusional ideas. It is those who suffer
from this last imbalance who most often receive the cold shoulder,
perhaps because we see in them our own instability and recoil from
the uncomfortable suspicion that we, too, have the potential to
become unwired.
Some psychotic or schizophrenic people suffer in a way not
unlike the demonic possession described in the New Testament.
Those people were drawn to Jesus as to a magnet. Indeed, they
seemed to recognize the Son of God more clearly than other, apparently healthy, persons.
Elisabeth, an acquaintance who died recently, was born in
Germany during the Nazi years. Forced to leave Europe with her
family as a young girl, she ended up in England, but there was no
possibility of long-term refuge. Elisabeth’s father was interned in a
camp for German aliens and then sent to a prison in Canada. As for
the family, they were forced to emigrate again, this time to South
America.
All this turmoil affected Elisabeth. Her lively and original personality gave way to unusual behavior and eventually to overt
schizophrenia. Because of her illness, Elisabeth and those close to
her lived in continuous exhaustion as one wave after another of
distress, spiritual torment, mental anguish, or physical suffering
engulfed her. Often it felt as if powerful forces were binding her,
and prayer was the only thing that could calm her.
In her last years, standard psychiatric help and countless medications were of no use. Only love and the emotional support of those
around her seemed to help. Singing and praying brought her
through the roughest hours, and again and again she found inner
peace, even if only temporarily.
Remembering Elisabeth, I often wonder whether those whom we
think of as emotionally unbalanced are perhaps a much greater gift
to us than we realize and dare to admit. They are vulnerable, and
they are poor in spirit. Through them, if we allow it, a part of the
gospel becomes a reality that is otherwise closed to us. The apostle
Paul tells us to carry each other’s burdens. What does this mean,
other than supporting one another, loving one another, and
praying for one another? Let us never forget, too, that in the gospels Jesus is called the Great Healer. He did not come for the
healthy, but for the sick.
Adversity can come in many forms,
including poverty and persecution. But when it takes the shape of illness, even the most selfpossessed person may find himself turning to God for help. Like
nothing else, the physical pain of illness makes us realize the limitations of our human strength and abilities. Unlike health and happiness, it teaches us to pray.
Paul and Nadine, a young couple I know, were looking forward to
the arrival of their first child. Barry came, healthy and beautiful,
but within a few days it became evident that all was not right, and
he was transferred to nearby Yale University Hospital for evaluation.
The same week, an older woman in their church died, someone
they knew and loved. During the funeral service, Nadine was suddenly gripped by a premonition: our child will be the next one we
will be burying. Paul remembers:
Right after the funeral, we got a phone call from Yale: we were
to come immediately because our son was much worse. The
diagnosis had been made: Barry had a metabolic defect, a
genetic derangement of his body chemistry. Worse, nothing
could be done. The diagnosis had been made too late to save
him, and his brain was already damaged.
The people in the ICU did their best, but Barry just kept getting worse. We wanted to bring him home to die, but the
doctors wouldn’t permit it. That was very hard for us.
In the night Barry deteriorated further. He was still
conscious, but it was clear he was dying. Finally we asked if we
could take him to a quiet room, away from all the machines and
tubes and wires, and we were allowed to do this. We held him in
our arms and, with several people from our church, we prayed
together and sang with him for at least an hour, until he died.
Because Barry’s condition was genetic, we have had to
evaluate each of our children who followed him; and with each
pregnancy we have had to put our trust in God completely,
preparing for what may be found. But we have worried too
much, I think, and that never helps. All we can do as parents is to
ask God to protect our children every day. And we must believe
that he will do this.
Another couple I know, John and Tessy, also experienced a sudden
shattering of the bliss that followed the arrival of their first child.
John writes:
Like many firstborns, Lakesha’s delivery was long and difficult for
her mother, but we were overjoyed by her apparent healthiness.
What no one knew was that our little one had a serious
deformity in her heart: the two biggest blood vessels in the body
were switched over at the point where they attached to the
heart. This meant that the oxygenated blood was going in a
circle between her lungs and half of the heart, and the blood
from the rest of the body was being pumped right back out
again, without going to the lungs.
Lakesha was only being kept alive through a very small
artery that functions during fetal life, but usually disappears
within the first weeks of life outside the womb. Soon she became
pale, and one day we were rushing to the hospital with a “blue
baby;” there, catheter surgery was performed to keep her alive
at least for the time being.
In 1988 there were only three places in the world that would
correct Lakesha’s potentially fatal heart problem: London,
Boston, and Philadelphia. We decided on Philadelphia.
At this point I must say that our hopes for a successful operation were sobered by the death of our neighbor’s first child, who
was born just three days after our little girl and died a week later.
It was a stark reminder of the fragility of life.
In Philadelphia we were received personally by the surgeon
and staff at Children’s Hospital. Despite the hi-tech atmosphere
of the place we felt the loving concern of everyone involved.
Allowing our baby to disappear through the doors of the operating suite was a test of our trust in God. During the surgery we
waited in the hall with people from Norway, Israel, California,
Texas, and Australia, all there to have their children’s heart
defects corrected. Those hours of waiting stretched on forever,
and we were irritable and nervous, our emotions strained. In the
next days we were allowed only short visits to the ICU, and it was
difficult to see any signs of life at all in our daughter.
Then a child at the hospital who was there for the same
operation as Lakesha died. After that we heard news from
home that the wife of a close friend had died of cancer. Sometimes our senses seemed heightened; at other times we felt
numb. But beyond our words and feelings was the growing
realization that all life is in God’s hands.
We received many encouraging letters during this ordeal,
but one stands out in my mind because it was written with such
warmth and sincerity. Harry Taylor, a frail old man who knew my
wife when she was a child, wrote from England: “Of one thing
we are certain: God hears our prayers for your daughter’s healing. His will is always love, here among us and also eternally.”