Sara Choe, from my World Race squad, posted this blog today. After reading it I knew I had to re-post. My heart broke as I read the suicide letter Bill Zeller wrote. The pain that he was going through was so intense and deep he didn’t know what else to do. I pray that as you read this blog and watch the video, you think of people in your life that life needs to be spoken over…and when you see them you are bold enough to speak the words.
A friend from high school and my church in NY shared a link on Facebook to this Gizmodo article: “The Agonizing Last Words of Bill Zeller”. Please read all of it, it hurt my heart at so many levels. I’ll trust you’re going to take just a few minutes to read, but I’ll share a bit of the prologue that Joel Johnson of Gizmodo wrote before reposting Bill’s letter:
Bill Zeller was a talented programmer. . . He took his own life. . . and left an explanation that I think it’s important you read.
Zeller was a victim of sexual and psychological abuse. It’s clear from his writing that the abuse left him unable to interface with the world in any way that didn’t leave him feeling he was too sullied to have the same experiences that he thought others had. He had a self-described “darkness”, which despite his prostration it’s clear he handled more ably than perhaps he ever realized.Programming was a solace, but only temporarily. Zeller never felt he could escape the things that had happened to him because he carried his torment with him everywhere. . .
I was left speechless; saddened and upset because it didn’t have to be this way.
A growing number of my generation are getting activated while on the field, where people like Nathan Salley are actually doing what Jesus said we could and should do. We go on this journey and get our hearts broken and our sense of normalcy ruined. We returned changed.
And while some of us are called to go back out there, some of us stay back. Those of us that stay back need to be advancing Kingdom forcefully – more so than out there, as I suspect there are more men and women like Bill Zeller out there.
We’re taught to ask for the nations as our inheritance. Now that we’ve spanned the world, how ’bout we asked for our hometown?
I don’t know. . . I think it’s like what Ezekiel Azonwu said in this spoken word piece (as Steve shared):
“If I’m not speaking life into you, I’m killing you. . .. . . we pretend that we’re mimesnot knowing that our audience is potentially blind.”
You know, as I read Bill’s letter, I wondered where God’s people were in all this. Why didn’t we show up for Bill? A true encounter with God (not the experience he got from the filter of his family) would’ve turned everything around.
Then as I listened to Ezekiel’s words for the umpteenth time, I was rendered further speechless. . . that perhaps it wasn’t Bill who took his own life, but that our silence made us accomplices.
No one told him that God loves music with a beat. No one told him how extravagant his grace is. No one told him that nothing is beyond redemption.
No one told him that God gave his life to restore intimacy. No one told him that we’re healed by his wounds. No one told that he’s never been alone.
No one spoke truth over the lies that kept him in the darkness. No one wielded their Christ-given authority break off the spiritual strongholds.
No one declared freedom over him. No one spoke up. No one showed up for him.
And that is not okay.
And I don’t know what else to think or say or even pray.
