The Awful Choice

What choice do you need to avoid at all costs? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

September is always a special month for me. It is my birthday month and the day for me will be this Thursday. I will be 39. No. I don’t man Jack Benny 39. I mean I was literally born in 1980.

So there is always something I look forward to in September. Nowadays also, it’s pretty easy for people to give gifts to me. Just Amazon cards and I’m good. My folks gave me a gift card to the Nintendo eShop so I could get the Collection of Mana on the Switch, my wife gave me Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far, my in-laws got me an Amazon card, my sister will be getting me something I’m sure, and Thursday night a depression and bipolar support group Allie and I attend will be having a cake party for me.

Yet with all of that, I decided to also donate my birthday to a cause and that is to stop an awful choice. September is a happy month, but it’s also a time to think about something quite serious. September is National Suicide Awareness Month.

Suicide is the awful choice, and I know about it all too well. My wife is someone who struggles with this and when I met her she had just had a suicide attempt. The worst day of my life, and nothing else ever comes close, was when I found out she had had a second overdose. Nothing comes close to that. Thankfully, she is starting to get the therapy that she needs.

When someone is wrestling with suicidal temptations, they really are not thinking straight. I meet people who had a loved one commit suicide decades earlier and they are still being affected by it. It is never something that you just get over. It leaves behind so many questions.

The thing is that suicide is a way of saying that nothing else is worth it. Evil has won the battle over good as far as the person is concerned. There is useless suffering in their lives. It’s not a shock that many times this is coming alongside of doubt in God. This is normally not so much His existence, but His goodness. Does God really care?

One can easily think of C.S. Lewis. When his wife died, he wrote A Grief Observed. There he found that the awful fear was not that God does not exist. It is that God does exist and this is what He is really like. It is easy to question God’s forgiveness and love.

This is even more so when we live in a society that tends to base everything on our emotions and how we feel. If we feel like God doesn’t care, well guess what? It seems obvious that God doesn’t care. Add in that God could do something and He doesn’t seem to and you have a recipe for disaster.

I wish I could convince anyone out there like this that that is not so. The truth is, a rational argument will very rarely overpower an emotion. Might I just urge you then to do a few things?

First off, please get a counselor. An LPC is preferred but even if simply a pastoral counselor, get one. You need someone you can talk to who can help you through this.

Second, get out of the house some. It’s so tempting to isolate, but that only makes it worse. Go out and spend time with friends and family who do care about you.

Third, if you have to, go to a hospital or some place like that. Get yourself taken care of. Don’t be afraid if you’re a Christian, or anyone else for that matter, to take psychiatric medication. Your brain can need medication just as much as your body can.

Fourth, please try to realize you are loved. Your emotions will very often lie to you about many many things. It’s hard to hear that they are, but the truth is, they are.

Fifth, if you need to, reach out to the Suicide Prevention Hotline. You have no idea how many people will miss you if you do something to yourself. You might think you are no big deal, but the truth is that you are. I would not even wish my worst enemy to commit suicide.

Whoever you are reading this, please understand you are loved as you are. Love is not something earned. It is a gift. You are a gift as well. Someone out there views you in some way as a gift.

Please don’t make the awful choice.

Please live.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Suicide Prevention Hotline can be donated to here.

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