What would you do, if your Child wants to Die:

This is difficult. I didn't want to admit that my child I raised, could possibly be at the end of her rope of hope and be dangerously walking the suicide line. What did I do, when I knew she was desperate and had lost all hope and didn't want any help. She isolated herself, and stayed away from family activities.
This was the longest hardest summer of my life, since my first daughter Lindsey died. Now, I was facing the reality of my daughter who was married, wanting to commit suicide. She honestly felt like there was no reason for her to go on. Her husband wanted a divorce, and that was that. Sure, he was young when he married her, but alot of marriages begin young, and grow up together.
She'd been married nearly 3 years, and she adored this guy. You know, there were so many red flags that were going up before she married him, but I talked with her so many times, and she assured me, and had me trust her instincts, and not mine, that things were all good. They weren't. I wasn't going to find this out till almost 3 years later.
I saw the signs,,I knew she didn't come around the house much after she was married, but I'd tell myself, she's making her own way, and I was NOT going to interfere. If she wanted my advice, she'd ask. I didn't want to be one of "those' kinds of mother-in-laws in their marriage. So the times they did come to family events, I was grateful. Yes, we'd talk often on the phone, and sometimes I'd hear something in her voice, but I could tell she didn't want me to ask..... until this summer. The same summer that my youngest daughter was planning her marriage, I found out that my oldest daughter's marriage was not going to make it. Not because she didn't want it to, but because he wanted to move on. I didn't know which way to support her, sometimes I'd do what I knew I shouldn't and tell her to come home and live, and she'd respond,, 'mom, I'm praying for him, isn't that what I'm supposed to do?". Yes. Of course. Pray him back to the fold if necessary. Forgive and move on. But I watched her more and more, and saw her get thinner and thinner, and then one night it started. The phone calls very late at night, in a very tiny whispering voice," mom, can you come stay overnight with me?". My heart was breaking. So many times I couldn't go over because it was already so late and I had to go to work the next morning, or I had already taken my sleeping medicine and didn't want to drive. I was useless at work the next day, because all I could hear was her little desperate voice, asking me to come over.
I call this the summer of my grieving. It surprised me how much I grieved with her. I wasn't angry yet at him, I was scared for her. She kept holding out hope and our family knew the demise of the marriage was imminent. What's so sad is to try to be happy for a child who is planning the beginning of her life in marriage, and knowing the same month she weds, your other child's marriage has died. She started to die that summer. She wouldn't answer calls, she couldn't eat, she wouldn't answer text messages, unless I'd say if you don't answer me I'm coming over right now! She became a recluse. Imagining her husband as a god.
Then came the times when she'd call, and her voice would be shaky and quiet, and she wouldn't say anything but "mom...". It makes me so sad and cry now as I write when I think of her voice and her profound sadness. When you're child hurts, you hurt with them. It doesn't end when they're adult, if anything, it's even more painful because you are entrusting them to someone else's care, and who knows how they may treat them when nobody's around. That's what we found out, in bits and pieces, the horror or her marriage. The secrets she lived with and was controlled by. She didn't know any different. she didn't know what was healthy and what was not. She only knew she wasn't loved anymore. She just felt that the one person who knew her best, didn't want her anylonger. She was like an old ragdoll tossed to the side, and told to "get over it ". It would have been easier for my family if she could "just get over it", but get real, how do you end the promise of your future? How can people just tell other people, to just move on. Don't they know that you can't just get over a spouse? What kind of heartlessness is that? It was uncomfortable for everyone, so I guess they would feel better if She felt better. It wasn't going to happen, in any time soon. My precious child, preferred to die than to live without him. She teeter-tottered on the edge of rope, barely hanging on, fading away every day. Quieter, disappearing from us and reality. The truth is, I understood her. I understood how painful and rude it is for someone to think that your marriage was just something to get over. To not acknowledge her life with him was a slap in the face. I'll tell you more about how the summer went and how she barely lived and nearly died. My daughter, my life. God thank you for bringing her this far, and Dear Lord, thank you that she is loved again. Yes Lord, she was always loved by you, but the dark one kept blocking you from her view.

Surgery

Here I was in early December, so excited about the prospects of a new job. Working in an OR as a tech. I went in for the position and shadowed someone for a day to 'try' the job out, and just knew this was the position for me! I was so excited. I even had inside help, a friend who got me in the door and was sure I had the job. Then BOOM! I get a letter from the hospital saying 'We regret to inform you...." you know the rest. Oh my heart was devastated. I could eat taste and drink this job, I knew it was for me. What happened Lord? Don't you know this is the kind of work I'd be good at? Couldn't you have just given this one thing to me? I hear the whine going on in my head...... but Lord, I've done this and this in your name, and you couldn't just give me this one teensy little thing I've asked for. Another set-back and disappointment. So it appeared to me.
During the same month I had a Doctor's appointment, and was told I needed to schedule a major surgery ASAP. I put it off, because I just knew I had this job in the palm of my hand. Now, I didn't. My youngest child had just married in October, and my husband and I were so looking forward to this season in life, time for us to expand what our dreams were. The ones you had to put aside for years while you chose to raise children and take care of all the family responsibilities before your own dreams. We did a good job as a team with our 4 children, now adults, with spouses of their own, and 2 with children. Now it was our turn! Thus, the desire to get the hospital job.
OK Lord, I get it, you didn't want me to get the job, because you knew I'd need at least 4 weeks off for a surgery, and starting a new job and asking for a huge amount of time off would not work. The downside of the surgery was that I would be basically a couch potato or a computer-head. No lifting, standing for long periods of time, no physical activity, not even to push a vacuum cleaner. I know this sounds like an ideal situation, but I have a tendency to be a neat-Nick. I had no one at home now to do these things, laundry, loading the woodstove, cooking dinner.
Plan 2 starts forming in my head, I probably need this time off. It's a slow time at my job anyway, so actually Lord, you're right, this is the opportune time to schedule the surgery. We'll figure out the game plan as we go along. God is so good. He allowed for one of my sons to stop by my house for the first week and stoke the fires of the woodstove until my husband could arrive home. And, BTW Lord, there really won't be that much mess, now will there? It's only the two of us now, so stop fretting Kim! The only set-back to this set-back was that I have a 2 month old grandson, whom I can't hold or carry, and a 2 year old granddaughter who can't understand why her Granny doesn't pick her up for kisses. My children really do understand I have to take it easy, so they are helping this transitional time as much as possible, by being helpful and understanding of me having to set aside 'grandma's job for awhile.
Instead of wasting my time, God started telling me to get working on something I've always been inclined to do. Write. But how Lord? and Where? There are sites everywhere online, and as soon as I'd go to one site, I'd follow a link and be distracted and hours would go by and I still hadn't accomplished anything of value, except downloading all kinds of things my computer really couldn't handle nor does it need. I just couldn't seem to figure out how to start. And that, is where I found my start! I googled, 'how to write online",, and I came up to a site called "ehow". It's all about writing short articles about 'how to' do things. I was intrigued. I wondered, could I do this. I've never written anything to publish, yet I kept going back to that sight. I wondered, could I use it for the Lord's purposes also? How could I work God into my 'ehow' articles. I realized then,that I didn't have to have his name in all my articles, His Name is on my page, in my profile, in my lifestyle. He's woven into the very fabric of my being. So I began. Scared, fingers stumbling over the keyboard, dictionary on one side of me, thesaurus on the other. Magazines and books piled up by my computer. I had so many ideas for writing, it was almost overwhelming in itself. I asked my children for ideas on 'how to ' do things articles, and they would text me this idea or that, and then I would take off on it, research some information online, and just write. I've only been doing it for a few weeks now, but I see God pushing me all along to this point in my life. I can see his hand closing doors, and opening new doors. I can see now, what I thought of as a 'set-back' a true new beginning. I'm so excited by all the things He's filling my head with.... it is finally my season in life, I realize He has given me many experiences that have been good, bad, and ugly, yet, in due time, ultimately God has been guiding me to this path. Thank you Lord for allowing what I called a 'set-back' to be a very exciting new door . I'll write more later, and keep up a journal about various aspects of my life. Come along if you like, you'll find a real human being behind the words, someone who's tried and failed, and won some and lost some, yet the sum of my life so far has been ever believing, and faithful. Let's journey together, you'll learn alot about what can happen in 32 years of marriage. God is so good. Goodnight now.