1 Timothy 4:10

A woman in Massachusetts committed suicide this week just over an hour prior to a scheduled auction for her home. She was losing her home and could not handle the stress of it. Although she was married, she was responsible for handling the family’s finances. She didn’t share the money troubles or pending foreclosure with anyone – not even her husband.

My mother, after nearly 30 years of being completely financially dependent upon her husband, lost him in 1996 to cancer. A few months later her youngest daughter (my sister) was given a life sentence for forging a check for $146 under California’s Three Strikes Law. Shortly thereafter, she lost her best friend (my grandmother) to Alzheimer’s disease. Later that year she lost her daughter (me) to marriage to a man that she despised. (With good reason.)

Feeling alone, frightened and hopeless my mother committed suicide in Februrary 1998. The Massachusetts woman’s story reminded me of my mother’s story because, like her, my mother did not share her stress, her loneliness, her worries, her fears, nor her financial troubles with anyone.

Also like the Massachusetts woman, my mother told us all about the things that pushed her into that hopeless state in her suicide note. We found out too late.

People say that suicide is a selfish act. I suppose I understand that assessment but I have never thought of it that way. It just saddens me. It saddens me that they felt no hope.

No matter how difficult or unbearable or bleak things may feel, we always have hope when we have Christ. More than anything I regret that I did not have the opportunity to help my mother understand or to feel His hope.

1 Timothy 4:10 -- "For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers".