It didn’t take long into the new year for things to happen that immediately try to take the shine off of the hope for a better year, and better days. When someone you know and wrote about takes his own life, there are questions. When a young lady loses the child growing inside of her, there are questions. When you see a woman that has dedicated her life to teaching kids and to living for Christ struggle with the horrors of cancer… there are questions. I have always been one that is unafraid of asking Him…why? When things like all of the above are going on, I ask.
What goes on inside a person’s mind and life that leads to the finality of taking their own life? I won’t lie, there have been times when the thought crossed my own mind, but there is always the safety net. Thoughts of my children, my grandchildren, and a faith that He is in control always overpower the negative thoughts. It is then that you realize the selfishness of only thinking about your life. It is in those moments that love becomes enough to make you stay.
But, we simply cannot know what goes on in someone else’s mind. This week’s events have made me remember many days in the latter years of my wife’s life. Battered by 16 years of illness, a body so marked by the scars of more than 20 surgeries, and living every day with the struggles of just being here, my PJ often talked about her desire to “go home.”
