Forsaken

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Mark 15:34

As we enter into the third week of Lent, I learned of the death of a young man, supposedly in the prime of life- but struggling with deep depression so deep he ultimately drowned in it and never came back up for air and aid.

Why is it that taking the life that is your own is so hard? It is hard because it’s just the ultimate rejection of everybody around you. Even God who gives us the gift of life in the first place.

We can dress it up in any way we like, but when we no longer wish to exist, when we say ‘no’ to life, we are in some ways deciding that the people we love, are simply not worth sticking around for.

Of course, I should add, we’re not thinking of those people who love us when we’re in pain, the pain is all consuming, but if we were, perhaps we would press “pause”?

I look back at that late teenage time of hormones and heart ache in my own life and I had one such moment where I felt life wasn’t worth living. It was a short-lived time, just before my exam term at Cambridge, when I had split up with somebody- to go out with somebody else -and we then split up at the start of the new term and then I had a fall out with my best friend too and on top of that, I thought I was not going to pass my exams, as I had spent not enough time studying the term before, spending too much time in Footlights and ADC and rowing and singing and basically everything else other than my studies and I was worried at that moment that come the following term with exams looming, I would be thrown out. And the shame of all this, all at once, however irrational that thought was, it weighed so heavily upon me, I wondered what was the point of carrying on? Better just to exit quickly, for everybody’s sake.

So I have a deep empathy for those who in a moment of darkness, fear the light has totally gone out. They cannot see from the deep despair they are in and so deep it is, that it will pass, instead they believe the lie that their only relief is to dive even deeper in. So often it’s at the tender age of the teenage years when hormones are ranging and perspectives get distorted.

Of course it is the fallacy of our culture today that we don’t discuss suicide until somebody does it. It is so often the people who are smiling, while presumably driving a nail into the back or their hand under the table, who do it.

It’s never the weird, quiet ones mumbling about death, it’s the happy and smiley one who you think has it all together, and then suddenly, they do not.

I think if they could see before they jumped, before they bought rope, before they took that lethal dose of whatever pill, the face of their mother, or father, or sibling, or somebody close to them, like a buoy in the sea when drowning, perhaps that would hold them off? Perhaps?

But it strikes me that when somebody does leave us in this way, leaves us bereft and questioning why we weren’t enough, we can only fall into the arms of Christ, who from the Cross cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He understands feeling totally forsaken and that is what those who experienced the loss of someone taking their own life must surely feel.

Forsaken.

It is the emotion we share with the person who left us.

Forsaken.

In the moment when we are so bleak and full of recrimination and regret and wondering why we didn’t notice earlier the Signs. Before we beat ourselves up, that our love was not enough, that the life we were offering was not enough for this person to want to stay, we have to see that Jesus from the Cross was rejected by everyone he offered that love to, even his disciples ran away at the end, even God seemed to have deserted him. In that place of pain, of total abandonment, of nobody knowing our internal agony, He is there, He is forsaken. He is in the pain that we feel. He understands.

He accepts the brokenness of the world and of ourselves and of our minds that would end life and he says, “Come to me, all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…”

In this season of repentance then, let us join with all those who grieve, all those who have lost someone they love, and all those who feel forsaken, for whatever reason and in whatever manner.

Let us focus on the Christ, the Saviour of the World, who died for all, who loves all and who welcomes us home, however far we have strayed.

Let us allow Him in to dwell in our pain.

Enfolded in the arms of His mercy,

Be blessed

Helen