To Write Love on Her Arms...

Tomorrow, November 22, 2008, is the 10th annual National Survivors of Suicide Day. My experience as a person who has lost someone to suicide is not something I normally talk about openly but recently its been on my mind and that is mostly because of To Write Love on Her Arms. I'd seen the shirts all over the place and always assumed it was a band or song lyrics or something, but last month I decided to look it up after seeing another shirt and I stumbled onto something that I wish I had known about so much sooner. The work that To Write Love on Her Arms is doing has given me a new sort of hope. It reminded me that my generation is not without empathy and that there are people in the world who want to help and who want to love those who are hurting. I am horrible at trying to explain what TWLOHA is, so I'm just going to let the mission statement speak for itself:

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

As I read this and the story of the young woman who started it all, I became more and more emotional because it made me think of my friend. I've written about her before, but I was afraid to talk about the circumstances surrounding the greatest loss I have ever felt. But in the past few weeks, the Lord has been moving in my heart and I think that some of the wounds that I thought would never go away are slowly being healed. I think that there has always been a small part of me that has wanted to make sure that no one was ever in the place my friend was in, where all hope seems lost and there is only one way out.

But for almost 5 years now, I've been wrapping myself in the pain of her death and allowed all of that pain to take over the part of me that will always be connected to my friend. I think that in a way, it was me trying to keep her with me, if I was constantly focused on the loss and the tragedy, then I could be sure that I'd never forget her. But lately something has changed. I now know that there is no way that I will ever be able to forget her. And its not just because of how she died. More and more I am remembering her life and the impact she had on mine before she passed away. There is so much more to her story than her death, and it has been such a blessing to be moving into this place where her life is what I can focus on. Of course her death will not ever be forgotten, and it is because of her dying that I want to help others in similar situations, but her life has to be remembered as well.

My prayer is that God can use me and my experiences to reach out and remind someone of how much he or she is loved and that hope is never gone. I guess the 'point' of all this, if there is one, is that I want to remember my friend by helping someone who might be in a hole that seems impossible to climb out of. I want to make sure that the light she was in my life can be seen in others lives as well. The Lord has been so faithful in my life in the past five years, bringing comfort and healing and I want to serve Him by loving people who seem to need it the most, who might have forgotten what it's like to have the love of the Father in their lives.

Glad to be Here

Its been quite a while since I've written, and I really don't have any good reasons why I haven't, but lately things have been taking a decidedly encouraging turn, so I thought I'd end the silence and write a little.
So Denver has been pretty quiet. You'd think that I would be super busy all the time like most of my peers seem to be, but surprisingly I've had it pretty easy in terms of schedule this semester. School has been a very pleasant surprise in that I've been enjoying it for the first time in a long time. Oddly enough, my favorite class is not my geography class, but my psychology class. Its just an intro class, but its been so interesting to learn about the brain and how it works and our latest unit was on sleep and memory which I found very interesting because I no longer feel bad about having to get more sleep than some might think is 'normal'. Needing 9-10 hours a night is perfectly fine, that's just how I'm wired, so there! Anyway, for the most part I enjoy my classes, but I am definitely looking forward to next semester because hopefully I'll be taking 5 geography classes, which means that I'll be getting into the meaty part of my major, so that's definitely a plus! Also, I found out that its possible for me to graduate next December!!! While I'm really excited to be done earlier than expected, its also scary because that means that I'm going to have to figure out what to do earlier than expected... So we'll see how the next year or so pans out. The one thing I do know is that the Lord is in charge, and I will go wherever He leads.
Let's see, things here really aren't that exciting...but I can say the God has been doing some amazing work on my heart and healing a lot of hurt that has been there for a long time. It is such a blessing to have this opportunity to completely rely on Him in a way that I've resisted before, but now its really my saving grace. I honestly don't know what I'd do without the knowledge that I have a Savior who loves me and who is constantly wrapping His arms around me, and that He is walking beside me holding my hand every step of the way!