I've been there many times. I actually witnessed at least one suicide attempt - my birthmother.
When they found my poor birthmother dead, everyone was shocked her cause of death was a heart attack. It was so bad my sister literally carried around the autopsy report to "prove" she didn't kill herself.
I would have understood if she had. She had a lot of pain in her life and only came to know Jesus a few weeks before she died. She drank. She had bipolar demons.
It's hard to explain, but I told Ron: "It wouldn't matter if you brought me 2 dozen roses and lay them at my feet, along with the Hope Diamond. It wouldn't matter if you brought me a litter of kittens, or a winning Lotto ticket. I'd still want to die."
The pain is just that bad. We're not thinking about you, we just want to end the pain.
I have seen a lot of harsh judgements today, sadly, from avowed Christians. I don't think they made God smile.
I have seen a lot of people, more than I knew, whose lives were changed forever by a loved one's suicide. I'm glad they felt they could share with me.
I don't want to be the person of judgement. For instance, I have heard these responses from Christians. Christians. When they realized I had a severe suicidal depression:
- You have a generational curse. Mental illness runs in your family, it is a curse, you have to break it. (I thought I did that getting fixed)
- You have sin in your life. It's eating at you and that's why you're depressed. It will go away once you confess and repent.
- You need to fast and pray.
- If you take psychiatric medication, it will turn you into a psychotic shooter (I have had to unfriend several over that persistent delusion). Trust me, I'm a lot scarier off the medication.
- You have a demon in your spiritual life, maybe more than one. You need to vanquish it.
- You have depression in your life because Ron is verbally abusive. If he stops you won't be depressed.
- You are weak in your spiritual walk/faith. You need to memorize Bible verses and recite them when you feel bad (latter advice not bad, actually).
- You need to praise more. If you praise God, you won't be depressed. (It is possible to praise God while depressed but in my experience the one never cures the other).
- You need to clean up your diet.
- Those medications are addictive. (not!)
- Those medications will put you in bondage to pharmakeia - The Bible warns against that and you will face God's judgement! (The Bible warns against using "bad" drugs, not mood stabilizers).
It would be easy to be pretty bitter. But I don't want to be that person about anything. Dude, if I start getting bitter I'm going to be the original sour pickle.
I don't want to be that person. I am ashamed when I see people like that, and try to gently suggest that perhaps God would appreciate a more loving tone.
This is the person I want to be when I encounter someone with severe depression and/or bipolar disorder:
- Can I hug you?
- I've been there. It's horrible. People don't get it, do they?
- Can I pray for you?
- Would you like a Bible?
- Can I hug you?
- Here's the number of a really good doctor.
- Here's the number for the mental health crisis line. They really helped me out one day.
- It's OK to take medication (as I tell the story of how Ron was on the waiting list for the nursing home before my diagnosis).
- Medication has really given me a great quality of life.
- Here's a great book on bipolar disorder.
- You can have a great life again.
- It's going to get better.
- God loves you. He's going to work this for good in your life.
- Be very careful with alcohol, as it cancels out the mood stabilizers. My mother had a terrible time managing because she continued to drink.
- Can I hug you?
- It's going to get better.
NOT the judging.
NOT the pep rally.
Just love and compassion, understanding they are battling a serious illness...if need be pretend they have cancer.
Some cancers have lower mortality rates than bipolar disorder.
2 comments:
You do realize that you mother living through the pain of mental illness all of her life was just a result of a defective brain which is in part my number one reason for no longer believing in God.
Just because she got saved 2 weeks before she died did nothing to ease all that pain and suffering she went through for all those decades upon decades? Not to mention the harm she did to her innocent children and what horror she caused you because of her head being so messed up.
I just don't get why you don't see the truth? I guess is makes the suffering and pain you have in your life easier to bear because you think something better waits for you on the other side.
It does, but it is not what your Bible teaches and we all get to experience it. All of us. Even Hitler and the rest of the mass murderers in our society.
My mother made a lot of her own pain. She chose to leave her husbands - she chose to cheat on at least a couple of them. She was married 7 times. The last one left her widowed but she lived in sin after that with at least one man. No one held a gun to her head to do that, not even the illness because I have it WORSE.
My mother also chose to drink. She chose to chase alcohol as the answer to her problems even when it literally cost her everything, including me.
Some in my life have portrayed my mother as a suffering victim her entire life, but that's not true. She made many terrible choices. I paid the price for some of them.
She chose to drink while pregnant. She made a choice to drink hard liquor literally every day, I'm told, of the pregnancy. She had to know that would hurt me. It did.
She chose to neglect me when she heard me crying in my room. She chose to drink more alcohol instead. She neglected me to the point she lost custody - and she should have.
I'm not bitter - stating facts, and very glad she was out of my life at age 3 and never really came back. She did enough damage.
People have pain in their lives. They either chase the wrong things (approval, alcohol, money), or they chase the right things (God's will, which I do).
Persuing God's will may bring me some short term pain - for instance if my husband has been awful to me I'm commanded to forgive him (when he repents); but in the long term it's a much more satisfying way to live.
Like I told someone, if I start getting bitter I'm the original sour pickle.
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