Follow Up: This Terrible "Club"

Follow up to This Terrible "Club":

I am stunned by the sheer number of you who have written to share your experience with losing a loved one to suicide. I had no idea. It feels like from every corner of the world you have painfully raised your hands and said, "I'm a member of that club."

Oh, dear ones - my heart aches for you all. How I long to be able to hug each one of you and mingle our tears together. I'm so grateful that God has collected our tears in a bottle (it's a big one) and weeps with us that our loved ones were torn away from us much too soon. Many of you say the pain is as fresh today as it was when it happened.

Let's keep remembering others in the club tonight, and ask the Spirit of God to bind the enemy from perpetuating this spirit of despair and hopelessness in the lives of the generations coming behind us... and to loosen the Angel Armies to fight on behalf of those who even now are sitting in the darkness debating whether they can make it one more day. Let's join in prayer together to ask the Redeemer God to help us find treasure in the darkness of our sorrow - to discover the riches hidden in secret places so that we can know He is the Lord, God of Israel, the one who calls us by name (Isaiah 45:3)

This Terrible "Club"

For any of you whose loved one took their life / I share your deep grief and anguish. It's a terrible "club" to belong to and I wish none of us did. But here we are - completely shattered by it and yet, for us, we find ourselves leaning into Jesus like never before. No human words are enough - no human strategy for dealing with the grief is enough - it is only in our hope of the resurrection that allows us to hope for our own and for our Matthew.

We have determined not to let the enemy steal anything else from us - he took our son and we refuse to let him steal our peace, our hope, our faith or our joy. We will keep on living - loving every moment God gives us - serving him passionately - working to bring hope and healing to many others who suffer the daily torment of depression and broken minds. It won't be easy - but the illness won't win in our lives.

I'm praying for all of us in this terrible "club" tonight / praying for God's tender mercies to be real in our hearts.