when i am not with my true loves jon and sam...i work in an ER.
the name is emergency room, but often people come for company, for convenience, for free health care or for minor issues. sometimes they come because of unforeseen occurrences, a slip and fall, a car accident, a heart attack or stroke.
but sometimes they create the emergency. not like when i eat too much salt or don't exercise, but for what i have come to call a pre-meditated emergency; suicide.
many of the suicide attempts i see are defined as a gestures. when i think of a gesture it's usually a wave, a thumbs up or sometimes it's that one finger thing the grumpy looking people in the next car do. suicide gestures are for the same purpose...letting someone know what you are thinking without words. that message is "help". most often they are not lethal, but sometimes...
then there are the suicides that are clearly a surrender. this message is "i am done trying, struggling, hurting" and it is a serious attempt to end their life. i've seen 2 deaths by suicide since i've been there at the hospital and i have been surprised by the feelings they stir in me. not grief or sadness, but more helplessness. i have learned that if someone surrenders to suicide they will die. if the surrender does not change to fight; eventually they will kill them self.
we call a suicide that ends someones life a "successful suicide". doesn't that seem odd? success and surrender rarely go together...unless the surrender is to Christ. Christ brings the hope to continue in the struggle, the comfort to survive the hurt and the direction to keep trying no matter how difficult the circumstances...at least He did for me.
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