This year's journey through Lent toward the much anticipated Resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning has not been nearly as much of a spiritual journey as other years. But it has been a discipline with some enlightening moments.
I let life influence my feelings far too much. I know I am instructed to walk by faith and not by feeling - and that is the discipline part of writing daily, even on days that it would be easier to just skip it. Today is one of those days.
April 3, 1953 is the date that my birth mother chose to put a gun to her head and end her life. It is a day that is seared into my brain - just as 9/11 and 4/19 are. For others in the past D-Day was on their memorial radar, for the same reason as these dates are on mine. They are shocking and they rock our world in a terribly painful way.
While my day is tinged with sorrow, and I want to talk to each of my brothers, I do not want this day to become a memorial for my children. I don't want it to be a legacy of sadness.
I want them to know that their grandmother made a mistake - that she chose to give up on life in her despair instead of finding a solution that embraced living - but I don't need to point that out to them today.
Revisiting that sorrow fits so perfectly into the sorrow of the days to come for Yeshua in our remembered journey to the cross. Fortunately we have a different horizon in mind which was finalized with His resurrection on Sunday morning.
Thank you for the cross, Lord, and thank you for rising again to new life, offering us the promise of eternal life with you. Help us maintain a proper perspective of the trouble that the world dishes out.
Postscript on suicide:
It is the saddest of all deaths because it says 'no' to possibilities. We all have rotten days when life is a four-letter word. But what a terrible time to give up! As long as there is life, there is hope, and I choose to live in that hope - and in the One who brings eternal Hope!
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