Ablution on the Human Shore
There are stories that grip us. Some because we care for the cause being endagered, or because we are moved by something good. The click bait that moves our hearts for a moment and then that moment is lost in endless scrolling.
But then there are stories that could have been ours. And those can grab us in a whole new light, the haunting notion of responsibility or the heartache that nearly was you own.
I saw the story of Seven Bridges, a boy who suffered from a medical condition and listened to the idea that he didn't deserve to live. At 10 years old Seven Bridges committed suicide.
His mother had been trying to reach him, she documented the bullying that her son was going through and told him to hold out for the end of the year when he would begin at a new school with a clean start.
As I read the story my heart stopped, 13 years ago I could have been Seven Bridges, a story of a 10 year old committing suicide.
It was in 2006, I cannot remember the date but it felt like March. I was very sick, my family was very poor and medical visits were long and full of little hope.
I loved my family and despite their best efforts to convince me otherwise, I felt like a burden. This feeling became so lodged into every throbbing bone of my aching body that I decided I was the cause of my family's troubles. I believed I was going to die, or what was worse live unable to be who I wanted to be, a mother like my mum, and a missionary in wild places saving children from child warfare in Uganda and Congo.
Like Seven Bridges, I wanted to be a superhero, but my circumstances told me such a life was impossible. I was a waste of space and money that might bring my family even lower than I already had if I continued living.
HSP is a story I best explained here, where I also explain the miracle of what changed the impossible to the natural and how at 13 I really did go to Rwanda. And I ministered to orphans and had my first coffee while staying in Kigali looking at the hard workers on the hills as the sun rose, knowing in my heart the goodness of God in all that He did to end the civil war and genocide that ravaged those same hills around when I was born. Bodies were still being found in 2008 when I taught Bible stories in a church full of children who had lost family both in the genocide and from HIV Aids. I was familiar with the pain of this auto immune disease, it was similar to my own.
There is something shocking to us when a child takes his or her own life because we somehow believe big choices belong in the hands of big people. How can a child even know such a choice is possible?
I am thankful that I knew very little on the execution of my own planned suicide. For the weeks I took in convincing myself that this was a heroic thing I was unable to look up in those days on Google "how to kill yourself," instead I thought through different ways people had died in films I had seen. And being an easily frightened kid I had seen relatively few violent films. I settled on the opening scene from Return of the King when Smeagol strangles his best friend with his hands.
I set out to strangle myself. I gave myself a peptalk, in some ways I tried to believe my action was a proof of love, that it was self-sacrificing and not a choice of despair. But the reality was I felt trapped under the impossible and the probable. More than anything I wanted to go to Africa, more than anything I wanted to be a mother, and at 10 years old I had been told that I probably never would have children and foreign travel would probably kill me.
So what was the point?
In a world full of cold numbers and reasoning children are suffering under our own lack of faith, being alienated from the hearth of hope and called foolish for holding on to dreams. We constantly crush our weak members and think we can press them to excel. Only, some of us break. Suicide is the second leading cause of child deaths today. Personally, I wish when I asked the doctor if I could ever have children being so sick, he had been more honest with me.
He said what he thought was true, but he could have been truer than that. He said no, but anyone who has seen a glimpse of medical history understands the notion or phenomenon or anomaly, the least probable outcome winning out against all odds or the simple reality beyond nature that "all things are possible."
I wish I might have known Seven Bridges and that I could have directed him away from sources that taught him how to plan, or any of the million voices in our world that tell a breaking heart to give up.
Big choices are in the hands of small people, these small faces watch us with big eyes, and I hope I can be a good friend to the little ones who are aching as I once ached.
I am so thankful for the intercession of the Holy Spirit, who stopped me when I wrapped my little hands around my throat. It would have failed, I might have done more research; we will never know because He stopped me.
"Tirzah Lee, don't you trust Me?"
13 years later and I am walking out of one of the darkest seasons in my life. And as I watch my friends open up about their recent depression I want to be brave and open with mine.
In October 2018 I prayed for G-d to let me die. I was tired, and many hopes I had we're broken, my spirit was broken and the control I sought to have for my future was postponed constantly out of my grasp. Anxiety for the long stretch ahead was drowning me like the dark waters of the unknown- everything was burning me down to despair.
Heaven, to be finally home, how I desired it so much. To "shake off this earthly coil" and rest. Yet my own soul stopped me in my prayer,
"Tirzah do you not remember what G-d did for you the last time you felt so weary? Have 11 years so changed that child of faith who laughed even at certain death and corrected Missionaries from their doubt? Did you not cling with your heart to the promise of G-d that He could do all things? Can one man rob you of a future that G-d has planned? So what if he is false! G-d has made billions of men! Stop despairing. Forget what is probable, you know not what may be, and all things are possible!"
Praying to die is not proof that we are in
danger of losing our salvation, Elijah prayed to die when he was weary, as have so many men and women of faith. Yet G-d feeds Elijah and gives him rest, not only that but shows him no matter what storm or fire he goes through G-d is present and an unshakable peace. The still, small voice.
As my family walked through the aftermath of the Camp Fire that destroyed our hometown and other little mountain towns on our Ridge, I watched them walk with faith and something struck me in the story of our last 15 years living there. Had I succeeded in my suicide at 10, the miracle of being healed, the testament of G-d faithfulness and power to shatter all odds could not have happened. Something else might have taken root in my family, the fear and despair, giving up may have defeated them like it might have defeated me.
Instead there was a testimony that possibility laughs at probability, and says "hit me with your best shot, you will only give more glory to G-d!" And that was how my family dealt with the fire, they girdded up their loins and began to worship.
As Seven Bridges leaves a mother who tried to save her son from his circumstances and who tried to warm his heart with hope, I cannot imagine the devastation she is going through. The same devastation I nearly put my own mother through.
This boy may have thought like I did that all the troubles of my costly existence would vanish with my soul, but the truth is when we die we leave a body, and funerals are costly. Please consider helping this family as they mourn a tragedy that our own minds reel away from: gf.me/u/p8t9pi
Rest in Paradise, Seven Bridges. There are so many arms looking forward to greeting you.
But then there are stories that could have been ours. And those can grab us in a whole new light, the haunting notion of responsibility or the heartache that nearly was you own.
I saw the story of Seven Bridges, a boy who suffered from a medical condition and listened to the idea that he didn't deserve to live. At 10 years old Seven Bridges committed suicide.
His mother had been trying to reach him, she documented the bullying that her son was going through and told him to hold out for the end of the year when he would begin at a new school with a clean start.
As I read the story my heart stopped, 13 years ago I could have been Seven Bridges, a story of a 10 year old committing suicide.
It was in 2006, I cannot remember the date but it felt like March. I was very sick, my family was very poor and medical visits were long and full of little hope.
I loved my family and despite their best efforts to convince me otherwise, I felt like a burden. This feeling became so lodged into every throbbing bone of my aching body that I decided I was the cause of my family's troubles. I believed I was going to die, or what was worse live unable to be who I wanted to be, a mother like my mum, and a missionary in wild places saving children from child warfare in Uganda and Congo.
Like Seven Bridges, I wanted to be a superhero, but my circumstances told me such a life was impossible. I was a waste of space and money that might bring my family even lower than I already had if I continued living.
HSP is a story I best explained here, where I also explain the miracle of what changed the impossible to the natural and how at 13 I really did go to Rwanda. And I ministered to orphans and had my first coffee while staying in Kigali looking at the hard workers on the hills as the sun rose, knowing in my heart the goodness of God in all that He did to end the civil war and genocide that ravaged those same hills around when I was born. Bodies were still being found in 2008 when I taught Bible stories in a church full of children who had lost family both in the genocide and from HIV Aids. I was familiar with the pain of this auto immune disease, it was similar to my own.
There is something shocking to us when a child takes his or her own life because we somehow believe big choices belong in the hands of big people. How can a child even know such a choice is possible?
I am thankful that I knew very little on the execution of my own planned suicide. For the weeks I took in convincing myself that this was a heroic thing I was unable to look up in those days on Google "how to kill yourself," instead I thought through different ways people had died in films I had seen. And being an easily frightened kid I had seen relatively few violent films. I settled on the opening scene from Return of the King when Smeagol strangles his best friend with his hands.
I set out to strangle myself. I gave myself a peptalk, in some ways I tried to believe my action was a proof of love, that it was self-sacrificing and not a choice of despair. But the reality was I felt trapped under the impossible and the probable. More than anything I wanted to go to Africa, more than anything I wanted to be a mother, and at 10 years old I had been told that I probably never would have children and foreign travel would probably kill me.
So what was the point?
In a world full of cold numbers and reasoning children are suffering under our own lack of faith, being alienated from the hearth of hope and called foolish for holding on to dreams. We constantly crush our weak members and think we can press them to excel. Only, some of us break. Suicide is the second leading cause of child deaths today. Personally, I wish when I asked the doctor if I could ever have children being so sick, he had been more honest with me.
He said what he thought was true, but he could have been truer than that. He said no, but anyone who has seen a glimpse of medical history understands the notion or phenomenon or anomaly, the least probable outcome winning out against all odds or the simple reality beyond nature that "all things are possible."
I wish I might have known Seven Bridges and that I could have directed him away from sources that taught him how to plan, or any of the million voices in our world that tell a breaking heart to give up.
Big choices are in the hands of small people, these small faces watch us with big eyes, and I hope I can be a good friend to the little ones who are aching as I once ached.
I am so thankful for the intercession of the Holy Spirit, who stopped me when I wrapped my little hands around my throat. It would have failed, I might have done more research; we will never know because He stopped me.
"Tirzah Lee, don't you trust Me?"
13 years later and I am walking out of one of the darkest seasons in my life. And as I watch my friends open up about their recent depression I want to be brave and open with mine.
In October 2018 I prayed for G-d to let me die. I was tired, and many hopes I had we're broken, my spirit was broken and the control I sought to have for my future was postponed constantly out of my grasp. Anxiety for the long stretch ahead was drowning me like the dark waters of the unknown- everything was burning me down to despair.
Heaven, to be finally home, how I desired it so much. To "shake off this earthly coil" and rest. Yet my own soul stopped me in my prayer,
"Tirzah do you not remember what G-d did for you the last time you felt so weary? Have 11 years so changed that child of faith who laughed even at certain death and corrected Missionaries from their doubt? Did you not cling with your heart to the promise of G-d that He could do all things? Can one man rob you of a future that G-d has planned? So what if he is false! G-d has made billions of men! Stop despairing. Forget what is probable, you know not what may be, and all things are possible!"
Praying to die is not proof that we are in
danger of losing our salvation, Elijah prayed to die when he was weary, as have so many men and women of faith. Yet G-d feeds Elijah and gives him rest, not only that but shows him no matter what storm or fire he goes through G-d is present and an unshakable peace. The still, small voice.
As my family walked through the aftermath of the Camp Fire that destroyed our hometown and other little mountain towns on our Ridge, I watched them walk with faith and something struck me in the story of our last 15 years living there. Had I succeeded in my suicide at 10, the miracle of being healed, the testament of G-d faithfulness and power to shatter all odds could not have happened. Something else might have taken root in my family, the fear and despair, giving up may have defeated them like it might have defeated me.
Instead there was a testimony that possibility laughs at probability, and says "hit me with your best shot, you will only give more glory to G-d!" And that was how my family dealt with the fire, they girdded up their loins and began to worship.
As Seven Bridges leaves a mother who tried to save her son from his circumstances and who tried to warm his heart with hope, I cannot imagine the devastation she is going through. The same devastation I nearly put my own mother through.
This boy may have thought like I did that all the troubles of my costly existence would vanish with my soul, but the truth is when we die we leave a body, and funerals are costly. Please consider helping this family as they mourn a tragedy that our own minds reel away from: gf.me/u/p8t9pi
Rest in Paradise, Seven Bridges. There are so many arms looking forward to greeting you.
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