My sister gave me this book.
I finished it in a matter of hours.
It’s the story of Pastor Andrew Stoecklein’s suicide as told by his wife, Kayla.
It’s been almost 10 years now since my Dad’s suicide. I talked about my dad committing suicide just two days ago as my new neighbor and I walked her dog around the apartment complex and swapped testimonies. She cried as I told her that part of my story. I didn’t cry.
But reading this book….it was all too close to home. The memories got relived. I pulled out my journal to compare my similar journey. And the tears came.
Here are some nuggets from the book:
Engage, don’t ignore. We can keep showing up; we can keep showing them there is nothing they can do to push us away. If they don’t answer the phone, we can leave them encouraging voicemails; if they don’t answer the door, we can leave special gifts or thoughtful notes on their doorsteps. We can continue to show up because their lives are worth fighting for.
C.S. Lewis puts it best when he said “God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.”
How we respond to temptation determines our destination.
One person every 40 seconds dies by suicide.
This is suicide. Our finite minds have no place to categorize it. We weren’t created to process this kind of pain and death.
We stood around his bedside and read Psalm 23. (I remember when I got the call in Iraq that my dad committed suicide…Heather Mercer read to me Psalm 23 and I still remember me on my knees reading it out-loud on my living room floor with my 2 Iranian sisters there with me.)
To live fully dependent on Christ-that’s the secret to living beyond the suffering.
“We cannot direct the wind,
but we can adjust our sails.”
When we lose someone we love, it changes the way we see the world.
But there is something sacred about showing up to fight for our story.
I learned that dreaming is at the heart of rebuilding. To rebuild we must dare to dream beyond the destruction.
Life is about bringing God glory.
