Category Archives: faith

Cries and Sighs

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in anger, boundaries, conflicts, courage, depression, faith

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Let my cries and sighs heal me and restore me and bring me to joy. Let me never again succumb to bitterness or depressing thoughts, God, show me life’s meaning. (Rebbe Nachman of Breslow)

This coming Friday will mark the anniversary of my father’s suicide, gone now for seventeen years.  The calendar this year is the same as it was that year, with Easter coming the week before he died. I am so grateful for the space of time between his death and now. The first year after he died, I was caught—every day— in the rawness of grief, and in the post-traumatic-stress of losing him to suicide.  The second and third years the grief washed in and out like the tide. I suffered with periodic depressions all through the year. Now it’s mostly around Easter and his death date.

Things still remind me of his suicide.  I’ve worked at desensitizing my tender feelings as much as possible, but every year around this time, I feel irritable and emotional. Movies, books, family, friends, and Easter are big reminders. Some little thing like my husband not listening to me will tie me in knots for days.

A minister where I used to go to church did that suicide-mimicking thing from the pulpit.  I finally drummed up enough courage to let him know the way he joked up there during his sermons bothered me.  He reacted insensitively, and said I needed to get over my dad’s suicide. I stared at him, pushing back the desire to jump up and leave. I stared at him, thinking of every cuss word in my large profane vocabulary. I think I stared at him for a long, long time. It might have only been a minute.  But my knees were weak and my mouth was speechless.  Finally, we started talking, beyond my anger at his quick remark and his callousness, beyond his reaction that I was criticizing his sermons. He apologized. He said, still, he was trying to tell me I needed to live in joy and not let things hurt so.

I wish I could say that his insensitivity is the reason I left his church. It’s so much easier to blame someone than to look deep within, and I did kinda do that for a while. But things always go deeper. Every year, I want to not do this holiday. I want to push past Easter. I want to push past the anniversary of Daddy’s suicide.  I hear how people say they are so grateful for Jesus dying on the cross for their salvation.  His dying breaks my heart, and guilt pours out of me nearly as much as the year Daddy died. I can’t say I am grateful for anyone dying for me. Mostly, my feelings just hurt.

I feel defensive that I don’t want to celebrate Easter. It seems to announce, in my mind anyway, I’m not a Christian and that I don’t love Jesus.  My epiphany today: If I didn’t love Jesus (or my dad), I wouldn’t have this grief swirling around in my brain.

     God listens, loves, and heals a grieving heart.

God Tied His Own Hands

31 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in faith, God, hell, suicide

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            “Poor God,” I thought.  “God gave away all control over us when God gave us free will.”

          It was one of my first thoughts when Daddy killed himself.  I felt sorry for God and thought God helpless.  I imagined God crying along with my family, grief-stricken.  Everyone loved my father and thought well of him.  Everyone was hurt by my Dad’s death, including God. 

            I foolishly worried that God would have no choice but to send my Dad to hell.  From the first day, I started bargaining. I remembered rationalizing that certainly as my father’s Judge, God would have to take into consideration mental illness—even human judges did that.  Didn’t they?  Surely, my family and I were about pay enough of a hell-debt to get Daddy into heaven.  I wasn’t the only one with this worry.  One aunt said she was almost sure that Daddy had been baptized, as if that saved him from Hell—as if God would have sent him straight to hell. 

            That fear of my father going to hell was covered over later with feelings of hurt and anger.  My husband and I were invited to a neighbor’s party.  All the women chatted together for a while in the kitchen.  One woman talked about her love for God and stupidly said how sorry she felt for people who kill themselves because they would never get to heaven.  Such judgmental words about God flowed out of the same mouth that had just described a loving God.  I wished, at the time, that I could have said my thoughts to her, but I hurt too much to speak.  And I was too afraid of what I would say. My stomach ached from swallowing my words.

            It took me a while to get a handle on God’s power over death since Daddy’s suicide.  I started reading the Old Testament; I wanted evidence of a powerful God who could save my father.  What I learned really didn’t have anything to do with the business between God and Daddy.  The day after he died, an Episcopal priest told me that she believed God gave redemption even after death.  She said that she felt God would heal his mind and give him time to make amends.  Daddy’s impulsive actions, sins if you want to call them that, were now between him and God. 

          I learned more about my own relationship with God.  God wanted me to always ask, to always seek, to always find courage.  God was a tough old character who weathered my anger, despair, and even my lack of faith.  God wanted me to be happy.  But even a Higher Power couldn’t make me happy or make me live in the Now, the kingdom of heaven where God is, without my consent.  That was (and is) the gift of free will.  It was (and is) my choice.

“Do we really worship a God who is unable to be God when people need God the most?  None of us have kept the commandments.  Do we really believe God’s hands are tied by anything?”

…Rev. David Sawyer

From The Other Side

28 Saturday May 2011

Posted by in faith, miracle, numinous, spirit, suicide

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            My father, several years before he shot himself, told me where he wished to be buried.  It was during the trip home from my grandmother’s funeral.  He said he wanted to rest in my mother’s family-cemetery out in the country where there were trees and birds and farm sounds—not the cemetery plot that he and Mom had picked out two decades ago.  When Daddy died, I felt a great need to honor his wishes, but chose not to go against my mother.  She wanted him in the in-town plot.  It was closer and paid for.  There was enough stress without my making a big deal.  But still, I felt that we had put him in the wrong place.  It nagged at me.
            One day driving to work, window down, I heard bird songs along the country road.  My mind worked on a ridiculous plan to dig him up when Mom died and bury him in the right place.  That’s when I actually heard my father’s voice speak with that same grinning-tone that always tried to talk me out of things.  “Don’t worry about that, Karen,” he said, “I kinda like hearing the traffic.  It’s ok.” 
Hot and cold at the same time, I pulled over to the side of the road to let sink what had just happened.  For the last few weeks, yes, I had heard the memory of my father’s voice, but today—I felt him actually near me.  I heard his voice.  It was different from remembering it.
            I never knew how to explain that moment.  I gave up the particular worry over where he was buried.  The rest of the day felt light and easy.  It was probably the first light and easy day I’d had since I had found my father’s body.  Later in the evening, I wished he had of explained what in the hell he was thinking.
            Who’s to say what’s real?  It’s faith that gives a miracle its nourishment.