Remembering

My nephew Leonard, who took his own life in July of 2006, would have been 25 years old today. Strange how life has gone on for me, but then along comes an anniversary of some kind and WHAM, the memories hit and the bandages get yanked off the grief-wounds.

I gave my grace-in-the-hard-times talk today for the third time, this time to the longsuffering seniors' Friendship Club at First Baptist, and of course told them what day it is but actually managed to not completely melt down in tears.

I told them that when there's a suicide you think it's the end of the story, that there's no epilogue for this. But when God inserts grace, the story goes on. Lenny's parents have always been wonderful people, but since his death they have developed a depth of compassion and faith and sensitivity to others that is astonishing. They sense that God will use them to comfort others. He has, already.

After my talk, a woman came up to me and said she lost her husband to suicide 11 years ago, and what I said was true. Both of us cried, which goes to show that what Elizabeth Elliot says is true, that grace and pain co-exist in equal measure; one does not obliterate the other. And what Sheila Walsh once said is also true--life is hard, and God is good, and both statements are true at the same time, and one fact does not negate the other.