I've never lost a child. I have no idea what it feels like to be the parent of a child who has committed suicide, to grapple with devastating loss compounded by coming up short during inevitable brutal introspection.

We have all made mistakes parenting, but not all must come to peace with those mistakes in the face of tragic loss which screams condemnation that pours salt into gaping wounds. 

I've never lost my spouse. I came close in February 2015 when in the midst of a snowstorm I insisted, by the grace of God, that he let me take him to the ER when his chest pain escalated. It was pulmonary emboli, like buck shot through both lungs with the destruction of an entire lobe. (In celebration of his life, we used the green tubing from months of oxygen therapy as garland on our Christmas tree this year. Ha!)

So, I've been reflecting on loss and pain and what God offers our hearts in the midst of it all.

​This week I've been reading through Proverbs and pulling out the portion of verses that speak of the blessings of the righteous in order to pray declarative prayers.

"Righteous". 

That's how God sees those who embrace the cleansing work of the cross of Christ. God incarnate, God who came in the flesh to make me upright and to clear my name of all those things I've said, been, or done that I've struggled to forgive myself for. 

Proverbs 11:7 (BBE) says that "At the death of an upright man his hope does not come to an end...". 

What a promise.

Hope I can count on. No matter what. 

​A healthy person’s response to conflict or pain isn’t usually “I want to die.” It’s “I want this to stop. I want to feel better.”

But for those of us who already struggle with the undertone of depression all day every day, stopping seems like an impossibility. Sometimes we just want our constant feeling of sadness to end. And with the idea of getting “better” being an impossibility of chronic illness, well... we jump to mental conclusions.

​​​I know, I know. What a depressing train of thought! But that’s why it’s called depression.

​It’s scary when a loved one, especially a loved one with a history of depression or suicidal tendencies, comes to you with this idea. There’s a whole host of things flying through your own brain in response.

“Of course you matter! Aren’t I doing enough to show that at least I care about you?” And of course, “Dying won’t solve anything! Please don’t kill yourself!” It’s tempting to voice all of those thoughts.

​Sitting quietly on things like catastrophizing internal dialogues, depression spirals, irrational fears, and suicidal thoughts can help cement them in place and give them more power than they should rightfully have.

​Imagine if every time you tried to express you were feeling bleak everyone around you started crying, shouting, telling you not to die, and trying to take you to hospitals. You’d never want to share again, much less when it was really serious!

​​Read between the lines. “I’ve been feeling like walking into a road all week” means “This week has been really hard for me.”

​Listen to and care about that struggle. If you get the opportunity, the best thing I know how to do for my friends is remind them of a simple fact: We don’t actually want to die. Ideation is not intent. Ideation is the formation of an idea and the process of putting it on a pedestal. 

Giving us an alternate perspective is incredibly useful in those times when we’re trapped in a mental circle.

​You are the one outside that speeding train of thought, outside the locked track, and outside the rut we’ve wound up in. You are the one with either the power to isolate, or the power to redirect that track and put us back on the path we were looking for.

I like to be “that one” who has shopping done by October and the exterior lights ready at the flick of a switch the night after Thanksgiving. I practice what I have dubbed “being good to myself”. That means I think about tomorrow and do today what will be an assist to me tomorrow. It’s why I don’t rush to grab the vacuum and find the bag full with no back-up special order replacement bags on the shelf. It’s because I ordered them last month, out of kindness. Kindness to me.  

Three years ago Holy Spirit impressed on me that the years for over the top outdoor lights had come to an end.

I love my holiday decor, and every year tried to top the last culminating with the aurora borealis over Santa’s workshop with animated elves and life-size Santa waving from his sleigh. I did not hesitate when I believed I had heard God, because I knew this purge was a difficult directive. I immediately posted for my friends to come and take whatever they wanted out of my garage.
 
Gone. Done. 

And not a year too soon. I went to India to minister that Fall, and barely got my interior decor up. Last year I was in Myanmar and the Philippines for November. This year it was Indianapolis, Augusta, Cuba, Florida and Dallas, which doesn’t even count the 5 days in Nevada that just happened. Anywhere but Colorado, but for all the right reasons. I’m scrambling to get stocking stuffers, order gifts, and here it is December 14 and my tree still isn’t up. 

Carnage. Far too much carnage.

I live in Colorado Springs, home of the Air Force Academy, Focus on the Family, and Pike’s Peak. Colorado Springs is also the town where on December 9, 2007 a gunman opened fired on my church killing two and wounding many others. Most recently, you may remember Colorado Springs for the murders at our Planned Parenthood building. 

My family has lived here for 18 years. Shortly after we moved to Colorado, on a cold winter’s day, I went around to the back of my house. I attempted to open the six foot gate leading to the space under my deck.

There was snow and ice blanketing everything, and as I tried to get the gate open, it was stuck fast. I slammed my body into it. No budge. Something appeared stuck under it. 

What was that?? It didn’t look right.

I took the long way around the house to approach the gate from the opposite direction.

Then I identified a grisly truth.

An animal had tried to evade capture by darting under my gate, a strategy that had worked for it, no doubt, many times before. But this time, there was a build up of snow and ice under the gate, severely narrowing the passageway. The animal, I believed a cat, got stuck halfway without a moment to spare. A predator grabbed its exposed parts and began pulling, stripping the skin and fur right off the cat’s hind quarters.

I felt sickened knowing that the torture must have continued for some time until the predator came up with the same idea I had. Approach the victim from the other side. The cat was then mauled and stripped from his head, all the while remaining stuck fast under my gate, pinned down to endure a gruesome death.

It took me weeks after extracting the carcass to deaden the image in my mind of this terrified, suffering cat. It was the only way to avoid perpetual weeping. As an animal lover, it was that upsetting to me.

But isn’t deadening the image just what we do when we hear about bodies being blown up in Syria, violence in France, or even our own townspeople getting gunned down in Colorado Springs, or now in San Bernardino?

The predator Satan is an authentic enemy behind every evil, far more ruthless than neighborhood coyotes who viciously attack cats. And a real response from us is nearer to the heart of God than disposing of the “carcass” in our own minds in order to move on with our lives unaffected.

This same predator is at work in the lives of people you cross paths with every day, not just in sensational atrocities which make headlines. As Christians facing our own profound challenges, we do not get a free pass from engaging with those within our spheres who have been ruthlessly attacked. Satan is not just the enemy of our souls; he is also an enemy of the abundant life our good God wishes to bestow.