Write About Now

My heart is aching. Yesterday afternoon the 16 year old son of some good friends, a boy who many years ago made me a recipe card holder complete with a hand-painted monster, took his own life.

This would be a tragedy for any family, but as I absorbed the news this morning a gallery of good parenting images flashed through my memory: my friends explaining choices and allowing their boys age-appropriate freedoms; their involvement in the boys’ spiritual and educational development; their outings for paintball and camping; their consistency and balance in discipline.

None of us can know the intimate details of another family’s life, but from all appearances these parents did everything right. And so my heart aches doubly for their loss.

My mom often reminds me that in life “there are no guarantees.” We do our best to choose a good spouse and raise healthy kids, but for every couple who succeeds there’s at least one more—who also avoided promiscuity, prayed over their relationship, attended premarital counseling, raised their children in the church, and dared to discipline like Dr. Dobson himself—whose kids go off the deep end or whose marriage ends in an explosion of adultery and divorce. Whenever we allow other people into our lives we risk hurt and betrayal.

God knows this better than anyone. He set up the system of no guarantees, otherwise known as free will, and remains its biggest victim—every human in every time has made choices that cause him pain. “Your own conduct and actions have brought this upon you,” he says through the prophet Jeremiah. “This is your punishment. How bitter it is. How it pierces to the heart! Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent.”

I often question issues of justice, privately and on this blog. I would like a satisfaction guaranteed system, a planet organized to reward those who work hard and act honorably and punish those who don’t. But in this life that’s not to be; instead God simply promises his presence when we experience a small measure of the suffering he endures. And so I pray God, please. Please. Be with my dear friends who are also writhing in pain today. Amen.