You woke me from the terror of my nightmares,
said I was worth your time, your pain, your cross.
You didn’t shy away from my stains
From the sorrow I could not repay.
You awoke my desire
A fire for something
beyond self
beyond limit
beyond fear
you lit
my
path
until I
became You.
Holding out my scarred hands
Lightening another soul’s nightmare.
The kids and I were itching to plant some flowers, so a quick stop at our local garden center yielded some beautiful flower booty. I don’t usually get blue flowers, but I was craving some blue. Maybe because it was Jonathan’s favorite color. Blue was slim pickings this early in the season, but I managed to find some and when I pulled out the tab, this is what I read:
REALLY! Is this some sick joke or simply a product namer (could have been me) who thought up a clever double meaning for these blue morning glories. If it weren’t for the way my son died, I might have actually have found this clever and funny. Instead, I stood there numb and reliving my son’s death.
When someone has had a severe physically injury, and the nerve endings begin to grow back they are super sensitive to touch. The brain and nerves have to work together to properly interpret what is really felt. If you have emotional trauma, or PTSD it is very similar, you may not interpret what’s happening correctly. My brain has a tendency to relive trauma and I have to take those thoughts captive and speak truth over them. Yes, my son used a gun, and it hurts like hell to know he felt so hopeless, but that has nothing to do with this moment of picking out flowers. This is about living! These are blue morning glories, and a symbol of God making all things new! God, thank you for the beauty of Spring and the delight of planning flowers with my children. This is truly a special moment I am choosing to turn the page!
Impossible Circumstances are no match for
Edgar Allen Poe dug up Annabel Lee . . . or so the ghost tour guide in Charleston, South Carolina wanted us to believe. Often times we take bits of truth, such as Poe wrote a lot about dying women and he is shrouded in mystery and blow them up into legends.
Behind Poe’s poetry on death was a real person, who himself may have been stuck in grieving and trying to figure out, is death the final blow. His father abandoned him, and his mother died when he was only 3. His siblings were split up and his foster family was tumultuous at best.
He did not have guidance into firm and secure adulthood and, I believe, became stuck in an impulsive and impetuous childhood as an adult. He tended to alienate others because he had a sharp tongue and used it often. Drinking and gambling became two of his fallbacks when life was not going his way. He could neither manage success nor enjoy it. Poe’s life seemed destined to fail. His final words were reported to be, “Lord, help my poor soul.”
We have a real enemy who loves to attack our children. Jesus warns that the punishment is severe for those who harm our children (Matthew 18). Some of us have been born into abusive families, some of us endure hardship after hardship, and some of us have chosen our own destructive path. I am working on reading the Bible cover to cover this year and one thing is clear: GOD IS NOT LIMITED BY OUR CIRCUMSTANCES! From Adam to the end God turns the darkest of circumstances around. Rahab the prostitute is in the lineage of Jesus, Joseph the slave, saves his family who sold him into slavery, Roman occupation into the stage for a cross, a death, and a resurrection.
Poe, like many of us, could not see the possibilities beyond his circumstances. I tell you the truth, not even death can stop us! Jesus’ enemies thought that by cutting off the head the disciples would fall apart. They were almost right, the disciples could not see past their fears or the grave. But, when Jesus arose and continued ministering and preparing the disciples, this band of rag-a-muffins became a powerhouse of restoration to the sick, poor, lost, hungry and all those whose circumstances seemed impossible! So, don’t think for a second that what you are experiencing is beyond hope.
Children’s laughter
echoes Spring into
the window of my wintered heart.
Never quite thawed, never
shaking myself of the death that keeps my hands
cold.
I cannot bring to life that which I long for
I resurrect dreams until they are nightmares
and hold tight, until Edgar Allen Poe is not quite
so frightening.
Yet, I cannot spring to life that which I long for
Not quite a year since you were planted in
soil that would bear no fruit.
Yet I refuse a baron field
Death is filled with stubborn seeds of potential
I tend the garden of my grief
until Winter loosens its grip and I reap a good harvest of hope
that will warm my soul.
Dear Reader,
Today I start a new page of my journey. My son’s suicide is a part of my story, and you too may suffer this deep heartache, but suicide doesn’t have to be a part of another parent, friend, or spouse’s story. We can Turn the Page on Suicide by being a light in the darkness.
In my sidebar is a link of resources that will now be named Jonathan’s Hope. I ask that if you come across anything that is making an impact in Turning the Page on Suicide, that you will send the link to me and I will add it to Jonathan’s Hope. I’m not in your community and I want the resources to be as local as possible. My hope is that we can build a network of hope across the country.
Thank you for working with me to Turn the Page on Suicide and offer hope to others like Jonathan.
Love and Hope to you all,
bkmoore
Hebrews 12:11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
I shared with you that my son Daniel is learning to play the violin. He is a beginner, but shows real signs of a great musical ear. It is a delight to watch him discover his capabilities. This last week I got a front row seat for a transition in him. His teacher was more firm with Daniel and I saw the look on my son’s face. His response could go one of two ways, either he melted down into tears because he perceived he wasn’t getting it right, or he heard what his teacher was really saying. “Daniel you are too talented for me to let you get by with sloppy playing.” I bit my lip and held my breath watching Daniel process his teacher’s constructive criticism.
“So if I was giving my best, we would be further along in the book?” Daniel asked.
“Yes.” His instructor answered.
From that moment forward Daniel focused and they played a beautiful duet to end the session. Daniel has not been the same this week. He is practicing without much prompting, way past the 15 min we had been requiring, and he has even picked up on how to play the intro to the Star Wars Theme Song just by watching another violinist play it on YouTube. There is a joy, and discipline that wasn’t there a week ago.
What is it that you and I need to take more seriously? God has gifted each of us! Have you taken the risk to find out what that gifting is? Seek the heart of our creator to discover who he has made you to be. Like Daniel and I, you may be in the midst of God’s discipline. We are too beautiful, too loved and too talented, not to embrace our calling. Don’t you dare tell me that you have no gift, I’ve tried that same tactic. To be totally honest I squandered my writing abilities, because I feared rejection, lacked discipline, and didn’t want to take risks. God is changing me through Jonathan’s death, and revealing to me how much my unique creative fingerprint matters. I want to give you comfort and hope in the midst of your trials and circumstances, because God created in me a love for words, they are my violin. There is a drive, and urgency in my sharing my story, because God created my gifts for such a time as this!
As a survivor of suicide, there is nothing that makes me recoil worse than hearing, “Sometimes there is nothing that you can do, if someone wants to kill themselves then they will find a way.” The speaker is talking about some abstract, undefined person–not my son. Gratefully I have not heard that too many times, but I have heard it. I have not had the strength to respond until now, not out of condemnation, but out of a desire to offer hope and healing to deeply wounded souls and educate those that desire to help.
My son wanted to live! Everything he was doing, everything that he was planning for was to live a long life. Ironically I’d have to say that I would have fit the above statement better than Jonathan. I made repeated attempts on my life, he made one. I am still here because there were people who never stopped offering me hope in little and big ways, no matter what I might do.
That is the thing, the above statement always comes after someone takes their life. I believe that the speaker is trying to understand something too horrific to ever comprehend. Suicide is not something that we will ever be able to stuff into a box and say, this is what it is! I left no note, Jonathan left a note, some suffer from physical causes, others depression. Our suffering may be different, but the one thing that we all need is HOPE!
Don’t ever stop offering it to me, to those around you just because the task seems daunting or impossible. God is a god of the impossible! Jesus saw our suffering and mourned with us, brought healing, and hope to those that others claimed were without redemption. I will cling to that hope, because in my darkest days it is my sunshine.
The line was 2 and 1/2 hours from the door to the family. I stood there shaking, unsure whether to flee or stay, my own grief deeply moved by the loss of a dear friend. I knew that I was grieving for my son now, in a way that I could not at his funeral. The tears kept coming and I finally stopped fighting them. It just is.
Often, I have heard, the things that you are unable to grieve while you in the midst of shock and pain come out in odd places, and this was mine. As we celebrated Mike, I grieved Jonathan. But, I also saw heaven in a different light. The head knowledge that Jonathan was with Jesus became heart knowledge. I felt that Jonathan was with Jesus, because God gave me a glimpse of heaven through the eyes of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.  The whole trip to Huntington my mind was on the story recorded in Acts 7. As Stephen was being stoned to death he declared, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.â€
For the first time I could clearly see that my son was with Jesus! The heavens had opened and Jonathan saw the glory of his heavenly father. Depression clouds our perspective of heaven, we cannot see who we are or whose we are. Heaven was not a place that took my son from me, it is the place that received his weary, battered spirit and restored it!
It is God’s will that are sight is restored in our earthly bodies. (Isaiah 61:1-4) I have been with men and women as they were dying, I have seen the difference between those whose eyes are fixed on things above, and those who cannot see past their earthly goods. A dear woman who I sat with in her last days was ministering to me, even as she struggled to take her next breathes. Another woman spent her dying days cursing others around her, her only relief came when I sang hymens to her. Some see heaven so clearly that it changes how they live on earth, how they treat others, how they see God. Heaven is changing me! It makes me look beyond the grave to see that God is sovereign in all things, even my son’s death.
Words spoken . . .you promised never to say
and he’s hurt and turned away.
Broken dreams widen the gap
Between wedding vows and the life you unwrap.
A single word frozen like a knife,
Ready to cut the oneness committed for life.
But, he turns, his hands cup your face
The condemnation you expect—grace.
“Do we stop the story here or turn the page?
Am I still your knight, ready to engage,
Fight whatever battles that come our way,
Bend my knee to lift you up and pray?
Do we allow this struggle to make us stronger.
And hold on for just a bit longer.
Do we turn the page?â€
Teenager caught between holding it together and living a lie.
No longer sure whether to live or die.
You’ve been told that anything goes
And your drinking is just being one of the Joes.
You stagger home to your mother’s worried embrace,
No longer able to meet her eye, such a disgrace.
But, she cries out to the one who hears.
Seeking hope through her many tears.
“Do I stop the story here or turn the page?
Do I continue to love him through his rage;
Lay him upon the alter of your care?
Let go and have peace that you are aware.
Do I allow the struggle to make me stronger
And hold out for just a bit longer?
Do I turn the page?”
Your heart cries out to know the truth!
What’s your story, what will your life produce?
The only way to ever know the answer to what happens in the end
Is to turn the page and let a new day begin.
Do you allow life’s struggles to make you stronger
And hold onto the truth just a bit longer?
When faith is fading fast
And you’re sure your role has already been cast
Turn the page your story is not done
God’s the author and he has already won!
He knows our darkest page,
His son turned it and death lost its sting . . .
Do we stop the story here or turn the page?
Hold onto each other in prayer.
Our longings are poured out.
Shaped into memories and crafted
moments with you. Built out
of snowflakes, Legos and
tears. Bringing to life
our smiles.
If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call the National Suicide Lifeline at 988 or go to the website at https://988lifeline.org/