A Fast Forward

Monday, June 6^th, I had the privilege of finally being able to step back out and speak again, after several years of not doing so.  This time, though, the subject matter was quite different from what it has been in the past.  While I did still speak of suffering, it was no longer within the context of my “sick season” but was within the context of my father’s death, which was determined to be a suicide.  It felt like a “meant to be” event for sure since the church that invited me to speak this time, my very first public talk about suicide after publishing a memoir about it (Home: A Story of Two Fathers), was the exact same church that first invited to speak after I stepped out with the Hear I AM memoir. 

The group of women I spent Monday evening with was incredibly wonderful and gracious, and I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude just being in their presence.  I felt grateful that we were all still here together on this side of Heaven, grateful that we were all willing to step out and “brave” several COVID outbreaks to be in the same room, grateful that we were open to coming together for a discussion of a most difficult topic—one that so many of us might just feel more comfortable if we kept it hidden neatly away.  Death and loss can be challenging topics to talk honestly about; and if we throw words like “suicide” and “church” into the mix, well, the level of challenge just seems to skyrocket in its intensity.  But this group of women surely did not shy away from the challenge, and I am awed by all of them—and by the sweet Spirit that was with us!

The title of my talk was “A Mary Magdalene Fast Forward.”  In recent months, I’ve become rather fixated on Mary of Magdala, a woman who, after she was healed by Jesus, refused to leave his side—even after she witnessed his cruel death.  And as I prepared to speak to a group of lovely women about a not-so-lovely topic, this woman, Mary Magdalene, seemed like the perfect springboard.  She had, after all, lived through the worst of the worst in a most tangible sense—she had lived through a seven-fold demon possession.  And the revelation that I had as I researched the particulars of Mary’s life was that she went from living through hell, or having hell live through her, to living alongside of the very Prince of Heaven as he walked around on this planet that we call “home” for now.  Her before and after stories—before contact with the living Christ and after it—are astoundingly different, and this fact gives me hope that our stories can be different too, and in the very best of ways, no matter what we see around us in our darkest moments here. 

We must push ourselves to fast forward, to look beyond the tragedy that envelopes us, whatever that might be.  Maybe we’ve lost a beloved through suicide or the virus that initiated the pandemic or a soul-shattering accident.  The circumstances matter, of course, but what matters most and cuts us the deepest is the loss that is so profound and gut-wrenching that we cannot even begin to put it into words for others.  And all we can say to even ourselves is “This was not supposed to happen!  How do I live with this, live through this!?!  What on earth do I do now?” As I said to the group Monday night, I feel like I have more questions than answers these days.  But the one answer of sorts that did come to me as I hashed out some things that have challenged me to my very core was this—we need to try, with all we have in us, to fast forward.  Like Mary, we can have a most beautiful story in our future, a story that is permeated with Jesus the Christ, a story that will honor those we had to let go of down here long before we were ready to do so. 

I’m not saying for one second that this is easy—easy is the very last word I would use to describe it.  To move forward without people who felt so important to us that they were almost like our very breath, well, that’s a most hard thing to do.  But, like Mary of Magdala, with the help of the Light of the living Christ, moving forward through what feels like a dungeon of darkness, fast forwarding, is indeed possible—because with Him all things are truly possible, even and especially the very hardest ones.