Home
Suicide -- searching for God with broken hearts << Previous Next >>
Guest author: Liz Budd Ellmann, MDiv
Suicide is never an easy topic. The September issue of Presence journal included a story by Anne Cronin Tyson and C. Karen Covey Moore about offering spiritual direction with survivors of suicide. Readers appreciated the Presence article and requested more resources.
When I asked Spiritual Directors International member and editor, Pegge Bernecker, if she would be comfortable sharing with spiritual directors her article in Every Day Catholic of losing her son to suicide, here’s what Pegge wrote:
Please share this anywhere and everywhere. I believe it is God’s voice bringing God’s healing Spirit alive, and I am simply the instrument. It is an honor and testament to my son, to everyone who suffers, and in all humility, to my love of God and God’s power working through me. I am humbled and also know in a very strong way that my “yes” is what can bring this alive. From this place it just flows, and I am grateful. It gives meaning to my life.
Towards the end of the article, Pegge shares:
My journey as a survivor has taught me…
- Suicide is first and foremost a medical issue—not a moral issue.
- No one who is mentally healthy ever jokes about suicide. Anyone who talks about suicide needs to be taken seriously. Seek professional help.
- Suicide can carry a burden of shame and an invisible social stigma.
- A crisis of faith in God can erupt when we question how God allows a suicide death to occur. God doesn’t interrupt our free will, cause deliberate suffering or punish us.
- God forgives; therefore, our spiritual question becomes, Can we forgive?
- Choose a joyful and expansive memory of the person who has died by suicide. Allow this image to override what you may have seen, heard described or imagined.
- Go online to research suicide facts and prevention tips and resources. Share what you learn with others.
Follow this link to read "Beyond Suicide--Trusting God With Our Broken Hearts" by Pegge Bernecker.
To offer your resources and reflections, please reply in the comments section. To see others' comments, click on Reply.
10/09,2009, at 14:50
As a newly ordained pastor of a small, historic church outside of Princeton, New Jersey, I was thrilled that some of the residents of a group home across the street from the church began attending worship. These neighbors suffered from mental illnesses and though able to work and mostly care for themselves, they still needed enough assistance that living alone was not possible. One of these neighbors was a young man named David. He was a regular attendee and several of us at the church decided he would be our honorary greeter because he was so hospitable to churchgoers and guests alike. One night, David, who occasionally told me, “I have problems,” managed to take his life. It was difficult news to receive as a fledgling minister. In the same phone call, the group home asked me to conduct his memorial service. This deeply moved me, because David held a special place in my heart; he was the first person to ever call me “pastor.” On the day of the memorial service, I arrived at the church early to prepare. Standing at the pulpit, I was looking down, leafing through my notes on the sermon I was going to give. The topic was God’s compassion for all and I was using the scripture, “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” I had been taught growing up that people who committed suicide were not assured of their place in heaven. I didn’t believe such a thing anymore and hadn’t for a long time. However, I knew there could be several people attending who might have been taught something similar, and I wanted to offer a different perspective. To my thinking, God understood David better than anyone. Surely, God knew all about the illness that would drive David to desperately seek his own death, and of course God had compassion for David’s struggles and knew intimately of David’s kind and welcoming heart. However, I wasn’t confident my message would have much of an impact considering the grief and confusion surrounding this death, but it was all I could come up with to say. As I was continuing to look over my sermon notes, I heard one of the old wooden swing doors in the back of the church creak, which they always did when someone opened one of them, and then I heard an old, wooden pew in the back—on the same side as the creaking door—crack, which they always did as well when someone sat down in one of them. So, I looked up from my notes to see who had come in and sat down. There, on the same spot of the same pew he always sat in every Sunday, was David. He was looking at me with a big smile, and I realized later that this could not have been a memory, because I had never before seen him with even a hint of a smile on his face. His body was translucent and filled with light and I knew, soul-deep and without a doubt, that he was healed and at peace. As I met his eyes, the whole sanctuary filled with a joy that lifted my eyes heavenward and an energy that coursed through my body telling me “all is well.” It lasted for just a moment and when I returned my gaze to David’s pew, he was gone. It is the only time I have every seen someone I know on the “other side.” It was also the easiest memorial service I have ever had to conduct, despite the grim circumstances of David’s death. A church member told me afterward, in apparent shock, that it was the most joyful memorial service she had ever been to and she thanked me for talking about God’s compassion for David. I never told her why there was so much joy in that sanctuary that day, nor why I could preach with such conviction that I knew David was in God’s eternal arms of Love and Light. At the time, I didn’t know if she or anyone would believe my story, and it was several more years before I took the risk of telling someone about it. I offer it now, though, in this public place, in the hope that it might bring some comfort to those grieving the loss of loved ones from suicide. May God bring you all the peace your heart needs and continue to hold you strong in those eternal arms of Love and Light.
10/09,2009, at 18:53
Thank you Monica for sharing this beautiful story! Shalom, Karen
10/10,2009, at 09:39
More resources - Ron Rolheiser columns on suicide at http://www.ronrolheiser.com/
11/08,2009, at 20:13
Monica, thank you for trusting your experience of the Divine and for being fearless in describing it in such a public place. Truly a story of the Spirit at work.