Sarah Blake LaRose

What I will write in this post may not come across as warm and fuzzy as I want it to, and it may be disquieting. I write from my own wounded place as well as my place of accountability in relationships. If you are in a delicate place and need nurturing, please know that I am praying for you and I am also trusting you to make the best choice for yourself about reading the rest of this post.

I am a wife and a stepmother, a friend, a professor, a provider of unique services for people with disabilities, and a member of the clergy. All of these things contribute to my perspective. None is more important than the other.

This is suicide awareness week. I began it by learning that there has been a rash of suicides recently among members of the clergy. Most responses I see to these are about how sad they are.

From where I live, they are more than sad. They indicate a sincere need to be much more open in our society about the importance of mental health care and of authentic relationships that allow a person to disclose feelings that lead to suicidal behavior. This situation is gravely sad both for the families and the number of people who placed themselves in positions of trust and vulnerability with these people. From where I am, as a person who has lost someone to suicide and as a person who lives with chronic depression, this is not ok and those of us who remain must address it constructively.

I don’t say any of this without understanding the cost. I have lived with depression for much of my life. Due to interactions with other medical conditions I cannot take antidepressant medications. I have taken advantage of many years of psychotherapy specifically targeted to help me build skills to cope and communicate clearly with numerous stressors in my life. As my therapist says, therapy is not a lifestyle and there is a point at which I must acknowledge that some things do not go away. It became my responsibility to make choices regarding how to live on an ongoing basis knowing that this is how it is. Depression would be here, sometimes aggravated by other medications I need to take. The other life stressors I have will always come and go, and I will always have to choose the most constructive way to respond to them knowing that my response will not always make them better.

The other truth that I must keep in mind is that emotions distort reality at times. I must remember in those times that certain things remain the same, even when I don’t perceive them properly. People love me. People count on me. People trust me. If that feels overwhelming at times, I have only to remember what it feels like to lose someone whom I love, trust, and count on. When that loss comes in a traumatic way, such as a suicide, it cuts deep in the soul. The person to whom I was close when I was very young once said, “I pray I never hurt you. But if I do, please tell me so that I can fix it.” The one thing she ever did that hurt me was commit suicide. I experienced so much anger that I could not describe it. To be angry with her was unthinkable, because we could not fix it. So I agonized about whether she was spiritually ok–for many years. And I was afraid that anyone else I became close to might do the same thing.

The language that we have begun to use to talk about suicide frightens me to my core. In an effort not to upset each other, or to help people heal from hurts, we have stopped talking at all about the hurt that it leaves behind. Instead, we focus on assuring each other that the person is with Jesus, because that keeps us from feeling so much agony. I know this very well. I did it.

If we don’t acknowledge the agony that it leaves, we lose the accountability that makes staying alive possible. I know this because it was the agony of losing someone that made me make a life vow to God and to the people I love. I have built that life vow into my wedding vows. My wedding vows are not only between myself and my husband. They were also spoken to our church community and our family. Every day as I walk into my office, I pray that life vow for the people for whom I am working. I do it because staying alive when coping with the side effects of medications that induce depression and suicidal thoughts requires a daily commitment.

My husband knows that I do this. I have a particular group of friends who know about my ongoing struggle and who have taken phone calls from me at any hour of the night so that I can renew my commitment at a particularly awful time.

My life does not belong to me. It belongs to God whom I promised to love and serve when I was twelve years old. It belongs to the people who love and trust me. If I take it back, I commit harm. Certainly, God might forgive me for this action. But life is more than what happens to me when I die. Life is whether I live faithfully the call of Christ upon me. If I commit suicide, I am no longer doing what Christ desires but what I desire. Living out God’s call on my life means that I give up the right to do as I desire.

I am aware that many people are uncomfortable with the characterization of suicide as selfish. It is unequivocally so. It is absolutely a failure to consider my place as a member of the Body of Christ and how my absence harms the functioning of the community. If I call myself a Christian, or any derivative thereof, I must acknowledge that my life ultimately belongs to Christ and to the community I am called by Him to serve. As Paul wrote, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” As we know, he lived.

Friends and colleagues, if you are a member of the clergy or the helping professions, please do not take for granted the trust that people place in you. If you are a parent, please treat as sacred the absolute vulnerability that your children have before you. Most of all, find wonder again in the fact that God loves you. Your life is not yours to do with as you please. If you struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts, please form a network of support and use it for the purpose of staying alive.