By: Sandy

We called this one we loved, ET.  ET was loved but it was never enough.  ET had the “never enough” complex.  Nothing was ever enough and over time it consumed and destroyed ET. 

Suicide, a word that shoots through the heart just like a bullet shot through a tormented brain.  ET slew the demon of ingratitude.

Once again, I seek to be grateful for the HARD, doesn’t feel like a gift events of this past week:  The phone call that came, the parents and children’s agony, the shock sent through a community not totally surprised, the verbal stones hurled by family and friends who think they know both sides of the story, the funeral, and now the picking up of the pieces of shattered hopes and dreams and the resounding “NO” to the prayers prayed for reconciliation and healing here on planet earth.

The truth is I do have to dig deep to find reasons to be thankful, but they are there waiting to be mined out of the miry clay.  ET hurt many in life and in death, but the reality is that ET had a loving heart that wanted to love and be loved.  ET left two precious children who will take the lessons of living in the shadow of mental illness and use it to aid others and have limitless empathy for those encountering the same rocky road. ET left a mother, father, and brother who have lived the nightmare of never finding the answers needed and already desiring to remember only the beauty of this life, the smile, infectious laughter, fun loving spirit.  ET was saved by the grace of Christ and  that is ENOUGH to be grateful!  I cannot wait to see this precious one happy and whole, filling heavens halls with laughter.

This was a lemon of a week.  I choose to make lemonade.  I choose to be refreshed by the Spirit and walk beside those who loved ET.  I chose to rejoice that nothing, not ANYTHING can take us from the Father’s hand! I am thankful that Jesus paid it all and all to Him I owe.  I am thankful for having loved this one called ET, one whose life was filled with wrong choices but hear this ET made two choices that will always be right……….ET gave life to two, and they are called grand!!!

By: Patsy

How can you be thankful when someone takes their own life and leaves behind a grief so deep it wrenches out; questions so unanswered that your mind cannot be still; hopes for healing and reconciliation that will NEVER be realized this side of heaven; a mother and father grasping for a clock whose hands go backwards for a redo; a daughter with quilt for words that were full of truth but said too harshly; a son tetering on his own precipice of life; and too many who have not walked in these shoes hurling blame and accusations of what should have been adding to immeasurable pain.

This is one of those gifts that certainly doesn’t feel like a gift.  This feels like a baggage that will never be able to be cast off.  The operative word is FEELS LIKE.  This is not my first trip down this dark lonely road.  I found reasons to be thankful before and I will again.  This time it will be easier because I have learned the lesson of euchariteo.  I hope to teach them to the child left behind by modeling it while giving her room to grieve.  Grieving is important and hard work.

My gifts today are

The life of one who laughed long ago and now laughs once again in HIS holy presence, free from oppression of depression, the demon of drugs, and the guilt of poor choices because she had trusted Jesus as Savior!!

Hope for tomorrow and all that God can and will do through this tragedy

Son who showed up and made me proud

A God who forgives ALL sin! and a Savior who grieved and said it is “ok” to do so.

Sifting that comes from hard circumstances that have been allowed by a sovereign God and then applying the heat to burn off the chaff and leave only that which can be used to nourish others.

By: Patsy

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