And Once Again…

My heart is indeed saddened and broken at the news from within our small community. The second of two teen high school boys in less than two weeks ended their brief lives. I can only reach out with my heart to the families and friends of these two young ones to share the hurt and grief with them. I know and understand their pain and the extreme helplessness and despair they are enduring at this moment.

As I looked back over the obituaries of these two, I saw bright promising futures for both of them. They were both skilled and talented musicians with families that loved and cared for them. They appeared to be full of life and hope and promise. They had touched the lives of many of their friends as evidenced by the reaction of the community and the school system. As I write this, I know of a childhood friend of theirs that recently moved far from our community with his family because of a job transfer for his father. This young man and his dad made the long trek back here to say goodbye to his friend one last time. You see, we never know how much our lives affect the lives and hearts of others to the point that make them willing to travel long distances just to share one last moment together with them even though the candle of life has been extinguished.

The question screaming out to be answered about both of these teen boys is “Why?” There was a response to the community in the local paper to help the community deal with the shock and begin the healing process by local health officials. They explained the resources available to fellow students and the rest of the community to help process and deal with the pain and try to answer the questions of why. While mental health is always highlighted in these responses, and in many cases rightly so, I submit to you that there is a bigger issue in the lives of those who choose to take this path. What is that issue you may be wondering? I submit to you that it is an abject absence of hope that drives one to consider this as the only option left for them.

In observing our son’s actions, not only in the preceding year of his death, but also scanning back in time through our memories of him since childhood, we see an apparently happy boy that loved to be around others and was always smiling and could bring life to any room that he entered. I see the same things reflected in the obituaries of these two teens that I saw in the life of our son. The question we all ask is simply, is why and what happened?

As a product of the public school system myself, I can think back over all the ups and downs of my school years. I too was musically and academically inclined. I too had goals and ambitions and hopes and dreams. There were many childhood friends that would come and go from my life because of the somewhat transitory nature of families at that time. I did have long term friends and I would face many things with them that I saw as obstacles to my hopes and dreams over the years. Some of the obstacles that I perceived to be mountains of adversity, were in reality just small bumps in the road of life as I look back at them now. But at that time, they seemed to be insurmountable events that caused me great fear and trepidation. From my child-like perspective, they were almost too big for me to handle.

What did these perceived obstacles I faced do to me? As with all of us when we face things we believe to be bigger than life, they begin to chip away at our hopes and dreams as we can imagine them beginning to unravel, tumble and fall apart. The hopes we have for tomorrow become shattered and can even take a part of us away from ourselves as we look to the future and see our dreams falling apart, little by little.

I referred to these obstacles that I faced, but in my life, they were often comments by others – school mates, teachers and other adults I encountered – about me. They were often times the “labels” that others imposed upon me where as I reflected on them, I began to have doubts about myself and also my hopes and dreams. The fragility of a young person is not to be diminished when it comes to putting things into a mature, realistic perspective with tools of handling the ups and downs of life not being fully developed.

You see, words from others have a huge impact upon us. As others, innocently and not so innocently say things to us and about us, it has an impact. Those impacts can be positive or negative. These words over time stick with us and we keep them in our hearts and minds and as they build up over time, they have a cumulative impact. In fact, words today can come at young people from every direction. With the advent of social media of every kind readily available to youngsters, even at the elementary level, with the advent of smartphones and computers in the hands of children at a earlier and earlier age, these “words” are shared at an ever increasing pace. Unfortunately, children do not have the maturity to process and evaluate these “words” and often are impacted in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine.

As parents, we can only help our own children to mature and be able to handle this barrage of “words” they hear and deal with them by being there for them, establishing continuing paths of communications with them, and most importantly, building for them a solid foundation of principles and understanding for them so they are able to deal with the things they face as they grow up.

However, as much as we as parents, relatives and family are there for them and we help them build upon the foundation of their core beliefs and principles, we cannot walk in their shoes as it were and do it for them. We can only give them the tools to deal with life as best we can and hope and pray for the best outcome for our children.

But when the overload of words and experiences come into the hearts and minds of these young ones, it becomes easy for them to erode the fabric of their lives and shake up the hopes and dreams as the damage is cumulative with time. As family near and dear to these youngsters, we often do not see the damage as we see our children through our own eyes and they appear to be happy.

We must remember that children look for acceptance by parents and family and that they learn from an early age how to respond in the way that they perceive that their family wants them to respond. So often times, their true heart is veiled in secrecy from those they love the most. That is what makes it most difficult for loved ones to understand why and how it could happen.

All of this comes down to one thing. When hopes and dreams for them or any of us are broken, we are possibly overcome by feelings and emotions of worthlessness, shame and most importantly hope for anything better. This certainly can and often does inhibit the rationalization of thoughts and reason and they come to a point where escape from life is the only option that they see ahead. Certainly feelings of depression are going to follow and the combination of all the perceived broken hopes and dreams and futility leads them down the path to that escape.

We must teach our children by word and example that there is always hope. We must exhibit hope in our own lives by the things we say and do. In our own lives we must let the light of hope shine brightly even in the most hopeless of situations.

As a teen growing up in another small community, I had many ups and downs and disappointments in my life. By the time I was 15 I was hospitalized the summer before my junior year of high school with a bouncing baby duodenal ulcer. I was worrying myself about many things. I didn’t really fit in with the rest of my peers as much as I tried. I had hopes and dreams that I began to see were not realistic and I worried day and night about them. I did not share with anyone about the things that I was going through. I internalized them completely. However, on a visit from my doctor while alone in the hospital room, he shared with me a verse from scripture that changed my thinking. 1 Corinthians (KJV) 10:13 says, “There hath no temptation (test) taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted (tested) above that ye are able; but will with the temptation (test) also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

From that moment on, that perspective changed my young life. It was part of the maturing process to help me to begin looking at things from God’s perspective instead of from my own. That simple verse was what was the beginning of a new direction on my own road of life to see things differently. It instilled a genesis of hope inside me on my own road to adulthood and maturity that stays with me still. No matter how bad the circumstances in life may be, there is always hope.

I still grieve over the loss of my son. When he took his own life, a part of me died with him. I was not able to instill in my own young son this perspective of hope. My son reflected in his final letter to the family that for him, he saw no hope. To him, all was lost and all he saw was futility. And for him, he believed that death was the only escape from the hopelessness he faced.

As you read this, the one thing I would like each of you to take away is this. There is always hope, no matter what the circumstances may be. Teach others by the life that you live and the example of word and deed that you put on display for the world to see, that they need not be overcome by their feelings of hopelessness. That kind of hopelessness can often lead down the path of personal destruction.

If you are like me, you likely take time at the end of your busy day reflecting on the events of the day. As I take a moment to reflect, I remind myself of the hope that is in my heart. That hope is in the person of Jesus Christ. He came into this world to give us life and hope. Do you know Him?