Suicide
I touched on this in my last blog. I told you that suicide is a rampant problem, one that is growing in Ireland. It’s true. I met it face to face today. It reared its ugly head for the second time this week. My heart was broken for the second time this week.
Over the weekend a teammate received an email which held the devastating news that a 12 year old boy she knew died of an apparent suicide.
It’s not just in Ireland. The enemy does not exclude or discriminate.
On the bus ride back to the airport after sightseeing in Dublin, I had my second encounter with suicide this week. A man, who at first glance I thought was just a drunk guy kinda hitting on the American girls, ended up being a hurting man dealing with the one year anniversary of his girlfriend hanging herself in the only way he could. He got drunk and then he shared his story with any one willing to listen.
He was alone and in pain and desperate for comfort and intimacy with anyone.
Not a physical intimacy, he was in fact very respectful to us girls and sat an appropriate distance away, and he was very respectful of our unease with the situation.
He was desperate for an intimacy with a person who would look him in the eye and listen. Listen to his heart breaking. Listen to his dreams. Listen to his cry to not be alone any longer.
It was hard to understand him with his strong accent and the effort to hold back tears. But he did ask me if I had a boy I loved, I said no. He replied that he hopes I find one, for the love from someone is important and like nothing else.
I wish with all my heart I could share with you how I told him about a love like no other, one we do not deserve. The love of a father that pours over us in a healing flood. That he did not have to speak with strangers to try to find comfort. That there is a heavenly father that will listen all the time and will speak back to him.
But instead I sat in my seat and prayed for him. I made the choice to go with what the deceiver, Satan, was telling me instead listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
My heart broke for him on that bus and again sitting in the airport my heart fell to pieces replaying it over and over.
We are all like that man though. We are all searching and seeking for that intimacy, for the relationship, the conversation. The one that will bring healing. The one that will take away the heartache. The one where we lay our burden down. The one that is waiting for us.
I cannot go back to that bus and love on him more than I did. I cannot lead him to Jesus face to face. But I can trust that through my weakness God is strong, that I am forgiven for my sins, and that I have an intimacy with my Father. I know that I have the love he so longed to have and that he still has the chance to feel the love that God has for him.
