Have you experienced any stigma with your suicide loss?
Many new members have joined our group recently, so I want to take a moment to repeat something important for us all to hear.
All of the stigma with suicide can be hushed with this one verse in the bible:
“so that I would choose strangling and death rather than my bones”
This guy wants to die, and he wants to die by hanging.
The person who expressed this desire wasn’t just some random figure from 1 Kings or Deuteronomy. Far from it. It was Job — the most righteous man on earth. Job, known for his faith and integrity, wanted to end his life in this way.
When you are in that much pain, you think about choosing death, even when God calls you out as the most godly man on earth:
“Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Job 1:8b
Job was upright, blameless, and a god-fearing man, but he was also in so much pain that he understood longing for death. He describes it here:
“Why is light given to him who is in misery,
and life to the bitter in soul,
who long for death, but it comes not,
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
who rejoice exceedingly
and are glad when they find the grave?” Job 3:20-22
God made sure these verses were in scripture. He knew that thousands of years later, there would be moms and dads swept up in the whirlwind of suicide and needing to know that suicide was part of the human condition even back then.
Before it touched my life, I used to think that suicide happened only to “other” people. It was for those who came from a broken home or who ran with the wrong crowd. But after Tristan ran to heaven I realized suicide is no respecter of persons. It can happen to anyone. And Job showed me you can want to choose to hang yourself while being the most godly man on earth.
But isn’t suicide wrong? Yes, taking your own life is wrong. But is it any more wrong than all of the other sins Jesus died for? Here’s a list that includes taking a life alongside the sins of gossiping and pride:
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, Romans 1:29-30
I can put a checkmark for myself beside every sin in that list, including murder. Jesus says, if you’re angry, you’ve committed murder in your heart. (Matthew 5)
I am sad that suicide carries a stigma because it makes our children out to be something there were not. They were in pain, like Job. They didn’t want to end their life, they wanted to end their pain. They made a decision they could not undo, with a brain that was tormented, and in the youngest cases, not fully developed until their mid-to-late twenties.
Experts explain that taking one’s own life requires overriding the natural instinct for self-preservation. This means that even if our children showed no signs of mental illness, we can be certain that in the moment they made the decision to die, their brain was not functioning as it normally would.
I wish those who view our families through the lens of suicide stigma would be confronted with their own sins in that moment. We all need to turn to our Savior for forgiveness, as none of us are any different from our beloved children who made a tragic, irreversible mistake.
Paul was a murderer when he was Saul. David was the murderer of Uriah. Yet, both were forgiven and used by God. Consider this: those who look down on suicide in the afternoon might very well have been reading that morning the words penned by these forgiven murderers in their Bibles.
May God help us all to stop comparing sins and instead humble ourselves under His mighty hand.
Dear God, please help the people to see our children the way we see them. Frail and as You say, “but dust”. You are merciful to the afflicted and scoop up those who can’t keep themselves alive. Your understanding is inscrutable. Help the church to have Your understanding for us and for our sweet children. Hug Tristan for me, squeeze him really hard so he knows it’s from his mom. In Jesus’ most precious and Holy name, amen.
