life should be more like this...
... crazy, chaotic, completely out of our control at all times.
This is how it works. I get that. It keeps things interesting.
Over the past couple of months, I started and finished my first bout of full-day student teaching... 3 weeks in a second grade classroom, which has in itself its very own microcosm of ups-and-downs. This was a higher point in the crazy roller coaster ride of the past few months... the kids were overall pretty sweet, they theoretically learned some math, and I got 27 construction paper "thank you" cards at the end of the last week (plus a Dutch Brothers coffee gift card from the teacher :-D) And now it's back to regular college classes for another 6 weeks or so... happy happy joy joy ^_^
Of course, there's no point whatsoever in mentioning everything that I wrote before that last paragraph unless I'm now going to talk about the abundant downside of life... but at least you can go into reading the rest of this post knowing that no matter how it might seem in the moment, there ARE still high points to life...
Recently, not one but two teenagers within our family's circle of friends have threatened or attempted to commit suicide. Both girls survived, but to say that they are "OK" would be a huge mistake and would actually be a lie. Physically, they look fine... "no permanent damage has been done" as the doctors say. But still, they're not OK.
I know because I've been there.
The biggest question that people keep asking is "Why?" As in, "Why would she do such a thing? I mean, look at her... she's beautiful, she's got such a nice family, she's smart, she's got friends who love her... There are thousands of people out there who would gladly trade their life for hers, or who would gladly take the years that she's willing to throw away... What on earth could make her think that suicide is ANY sort of an answer to the momentary troubles of this present life?"
Let me tell you why.
You may have a great family, with a mom and a dad and a nice house in the suburbs. Maybe your family has been attending the same church since you were a baby, or at least since you were old enough for Awanas. Maybe you went to the good schools in town, and maybe you've always gotten good grades and made everyone proud of you your whole life. Maybe you have awards on the wall for your art, or for your band solos, or for your writing... maybe your name has been in the paper as an Academic All-Star or as the top finisher in the long-jump or the 500m dash. Maybe your friends are all good kids with the same sorts of awards on their walls and the same badges on their Awanas vest.
Or, on the other hand, maybe your family is fractured beyond fixing. Maybe your mom and dad spend equal parts of their time fighting and making up, making peace and raising hell. Maybe your mom tells you that you're stronger than your past and your dad tells you to make sure you go farther than he did. Maybe life is tough, but you know that you'll make it if you're tougher. Maybe you've had to work hard for your good grades (or your not-so-good grades), and maybe you're just hanging onto your spot in the Jazz Band or on the soccer team through the kindness of people giving you rides to practices and events. Maybe you're even good enough to someday get a scholarship to a college that's somewhere far away from this godforsaken town you've landed in, and then you will make your own decisions and run your own life.
Or maybe your story is somewhere in the middle, or a mix of both.
Either way, it doesn't matter. Because none of it does.
Your church attendance, your Awanas awards... you know it's all a scam. Underneath, you know how messed up you-- and your family-- really are. You know that the thrill of winning first chair in the band or first place in the art fair will wear off after a day or two... and then everyone will expect you to top yourself next time. You know that no matter how tough you are, or how good you look on the outside, nothing can fix the things that are broken on the inside.
And frankly, you get tired of keeping up the act. It gets harder and harder each day to keep everyone from seeing the real you, from seeing how you're barely holding on, barely holding it together. You feel like one of those plate spinners in the circus... You have to keep all of the plates spinning, because if one plate falls to the ground and shatters, people will notice and you will be a failure. And you can't just stop, because then all of the plates will fall and shatter and no one will notice anything but your failure.
And when your life is reduced to the spinning of stupid china plates, you realize that none of it has any meaning. That your life is meaningless and empty. Nothing-- not your good grades, not your nice family, not your reputation or your status or your trophies-- has any worth or any value.
You have no value.
And when you have no value, your life has no value.
If your life has no value, it is insignificant.
If you're insignificant, then no one would notice if, suddenly, you weren't there.
So, you start dropping hints... "Imma gonna kill myself. I know where they keep the guns."
"What do you care... I'll be gone soon anyway."
"No one lives forever, you know..."
"I wish I were dead."
And then you wait and see what people do. You hope that it will make a difference, that someone will notice you and ask you how you're doing... and actually mean it. You hope that, finally, someone will look behind the mask and either help you spin the plates or take the plates from your hands before they fall.
But instead, they tell you you're just being melodramatic. You're just young, and you don't know yet that it will all pass. You have your whole life ahead of you... don't sweat the small stuff. When you're older, you will understand how silly your life right now really is, and you will look back on these days and laugh.
No one takes you seriously.
Unless you actually go through with it, that is.
And then, when they realize that they could have stopped you, but didn't... when they realize what a great and priceless treasure they let slip through their fingers... when they finally realize all that you could have been was lost because of their inaction... then they'll finally understand and take you seriously.
Death not only is supposed to make you a martyr, but it's also a way out of the meaningless endlessness of spinning all of those stupid china plates. It's a way to say, "I quit... this is stupid...", without anyone calling you a failure or a waste of space. It's a final rebellion against a system built on fakery and mindlessness: If you die young and leave a beautiful memory, you win.
Game over.
But... I'm still here to write this. Apparently, I was such a failure that I couldn't even succeed at suicide... which is the same spot that these two girls who have been weighing on my mind so heavily these past couple of days are in right now. What was supposed to be a final victory over an unfair world has now turned them into victims and prisoners and (according to their parents and the "professionals" who have been charged with watching over them) "persons who cannot be trusted."
But... I'm still here. Let me tell you why.
This life we live... all of the status, all of the activities, all of the homework and practices and awards... in and of themselves, yes, they are meaningless. No matter how much we do, or how well we do it, or how many awards we get, there will always be something left undone, or something we're not perfect at, or someone else who tops us.
All of our nice houses, or our nice families, or our nice friends... Some of that niceness is a facade, just like the siding on a house or the paint on a car. It makes it look better on the outside, but it doesn't do a thing to fix the rusted engine, or the leaky pipes, or even the squeaky garbage disposal.
Without a real meaning to life, life is meaningless. Without a good reason to spin those plates, there's no point to spinning them. In other words, if you're thinking your life has no meaning, no purpose... you may be right.
Which is as scary as standing on a cliff and getting ready to jump.
But... what if there is a meaning to life? What if there is a reason to get up and go out and be?
What if you are valuable because, out of all of the possible combinations of eggs and sperm and all of the situations in the world, someone chose the specific time and place and matter to create you? What if you are not a mistake, not an oversight, not an accident... What if you were chosen to be born into this world, to live in these times, to know these people... for a specific purpose?
Think about it this way. Think of everything you did today, all of the choices you made and the choices you didn't make, all of the things you did and the things you forgot to do, all of the things that were awesome and the things you wish you could take back... somehow, all of those random bits of circumstance ended up with you sitting here, reading these words right now, and thinking about a couple of girls who you've probably never met and who probably won't even read these words themselves.
If that ain't random, I don't know what is :-)
But I actually don't believe in randomness. Because when I was at the point where my life had no reason to go on, and where I figured I had nothing left to lose by committing suicide, I discovered that there really is a God, and that He really does love me... not because I was an amazing plate spinner, but simply because He chose to create me in the first place.
I had been told the "good news" countless times by countless Christians growing up... but not one of them could give me a reason why they thought that their God would love me. Sometimes their spiel was, "God loves you... Won't you make Him happy by getting saved today?"-- as if God's love was a limited-time, call-now-while-the-operators-are-still-standing-by sort of offer.
Other times their routine was, "God would hate for you to be cast into hell... If you choose Jesus today, God won't have to do that to you..." Which always made me imagine God standing there, wringing His hands and waiting indecisively for me to let Him off the hook on the whole casting-into-Hell-business.
And then there was always this one: "God loves you. He sent His son to die for your sins. If you ask Jesus into your heart today, all your sins will be taken away and you will live happily with Him for all eternity." To which I had one question... Why? OK, two questions, really... Will Jesus make the kids at school quit picking on me, or make my mom and dad stop fighting, or give me an immunity to head lice? Which is actually more like four questions, but you get my point...
By the time I was 16 or so, I had my reaction to these oh-so-concerned soul winners down pretty pat.
Them: "Hello there, young lady... We're from that (fill-in-the-denomination-here) church just down the street. Do you know for sure if you died today that you would go to Heaven?"Which always made me laugh... If their God was so concerned about me that He sent them to tell me about Him and rescue me from the eternal torments of a lake of fire and sulfur, why were they always so quick to leave me once their script ran out?
Me: "I don't believe in Heaven."
Them: (Pause... for some reason, this must never have been the next line in any of the scripts they rehearsed back at the church.)"Well... if you don't believe in Heaven, you'll end up in Hell, then. You wouldn't want that, now, would you?"
Me: "Don't believe in Hell either."
Them: (Another pause... usually accompanied with frowns and blinking eyes as well.) "Well... if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, I guess you'll end up in Hell, then. Have a nice day!"
But...
God-- the real, true God who really did create the universe, and who really did create me-- is much, much bigger than any of the so-called missionaries who tried to boost their own spiritual self-esteem by converting one more angry, hurting teenager for their church. God really did send His son Jesus to die for me... not because I owed Him one for creating me in the first place, but because He loved me and wanted me to return to Him and be a part of His family. God already knew all about my screw-ups-- after all, if He didn't, then He certainly couldn't have been much of a God at all-- but He also already knew about why I was so screwed up in the first place. God already knew about all of the people I had hurt... and about all of the people who had hurt me. He already knew that I couldn't keep the plates spinning... and He knew which ones were about to fall.
God knew all of this all along... Even when I didn't.
All I knew was that I was at the end of everything I had, and it wasn't enough. All I knew was that I had nothing left to lose, nothing left worth keeping, and nothing left to live for. I figured that, if this "God" or "Jesus" or "Whoever" was real, then great... Maybe He could save me from myself. And if He wasn't... then I was no worse off than I already was, and suicide would still be there tomorrow.
So I kind of put it to God this way: "OK, Jesus... fine. Save me... I dare you."
For the first time in years, I found peace. And for the first time in four days, I was able to sleep.
The next day, I woke up. Nothing in my circumstances had changed... same apartment with the leaky window, same crummy minimum-wage job, same classes that I was struggling to care about and pass, same insecurities about who I was supposed to be and whether I was doing any of it right.
But for some strange reason, now I had hope. And that was what made all the difference.
And so... I'm still here. And now I can see that God let me go through all of the crap in middle and high school-- including my 6 suicide attempts-- so that I could stand here, on the other side of darkness, and say, "Hey... I'm still here. Let me help you across."
As I was thinking about what to write here and driving my daughter back from Youth Group, I heard this song, and it just seems to fit... Yet another example of the Randomness That Isn't that is God ^_^
