The Tears of A Clown

Dear Alex,

It has been about twenty years since we cut class.

Man, was that ever a fun time. Running free. Hearts racing, hoping we didn’t get caught. Sure the Highway patrol was on the lookout for two truants.

Guitar shopping. Blasting punk rock on that old Emerson boom box. Checking out the Concert Express catalog. Taco (sort-of) Bueno.

We must have been a sight. Sitting there in Southwest Oklahoma circa 1996. You with the orange mohawk. 

Me with the gothy, punky, headbangery, grungy, someone accept me cause I am socially schizophrenic look.

Then you looked at me and asked that question, “Do you think that God would forgive you if you killed yourself?”

I had no idea what to say. After all, we were just kids. And spiritually, I was a nursing baby.

“I don’t think that is ever God’s plan for someone’s life.”

“Okay.” I think you said, then, we went back to our terrible Mexican fast food, and our fantasy wardrobe of indie punk t-shirts that we knew our parents would never let us wear out of the house even if we had the money to get them.

I wish I had known.

I wish I had known that you had tried before to end your life.

I wish I had known who to turn to for help.

I wish I had known that you were not asking a random, reflective question like adolescents often do.

Why didn’t you just tell me?

You didn’t feel like you fit in anywhere.

You didn’t feel like you could break free from whatever prison you were in.

You didn’t even tell your best friend.

Friday was awesome. Then Monday came.

I saw you trudging back to the car. We were busted. Well, you were busted. I had cover.

Thankfully I can’t remember whose idea it was to cut class, because if it was mine, I am not sure if I would ever forgive myself.

I just knew I would see you again. You were headed home to face the music, I was headed to class. When you are 17, you live forever. Unless you take your life.

Tuesday, “Has anyone seen Alex?” Wednesday, “Man, I wonder where he went?” Thursday, “If we don’t 

hear from him soon, I bet he’s dead or something…” What a terribly accurate assessment.

I got home from work, and there was the call on my answering machine. “JP, this is [Alex’s mom], we have some news about Alex.”

You know it is bad news when they don’t leave any more details.

I prayed, and I asked for God to help me take the blow.

“They found him. He’s gone.” She wept. I kept my composure, hung up the phone, and fell apart.

Your funeral was very difficult. We walked from the school to the church. It was a longer walk than normal. I got to hang out with that cute girl with the lazy eye, and she looked great in her funeral dress. At least I was mature enough to have my mind in the right place.

I decided on the way back that I would quit smoking, you always hated that I smoked. That was my memorial tribute to you, even though it took me until New Year’s Eve ’98 to finally put them down.  

You may have thought you solved your problems, but you didn’t. You ran from them. Suicide is selfish, and unforgiving. It is permanent solution to temporary problems. I have to confess that I am still pretty angry at you, but who am I kidding, I can’t be mad at you...  but it hurt others, and it still hurts.

Somewhere I have some of your artwork. Your dog collar. Your bass guitar is on permanent loan to a kid you never knew. Sometimes I find stuff in my garage or whatever, and usually it stops me. I shed a tear. I move on.

The thing that hurts the most is that you never talked to me. You never told me.

What if you had? Maybe we could be laughing about the time we cut class and you got busted. You would have loved the new Supertones record, and Squad 5-0 broke big right after you…

We could have talked to our youth pastor, or the school counselor, the art teacher, anyone.

But no. You didn’t talk to us. You ran.

About a year later, your mom got to where she couldn’t bear the pain. Your dad took her to an inpatient mental facility. On the way home, he pulled over to the side of the road to take a nap and was killed by an 18 wheeler.

Did you know that you would do that to her? To him?

How could you have ever known how much you would hurt others? If you'd known, you never would have.

It doesn’t end the pain. At least not for us.

God has helped me work through most of this. But man, if I could see you again, I would just grab you, and hold you, and tell you that whatever it was that we could have worked it out. We could have fought it together. We could have won, I know it.

So maybe someone will read this. And they will think, “Man… I don’t want to do that to someone. I don’t want my best friend to be aching inside twenty years later.” That’s why I am writing to you. So that you, and maybe others can see.

It’s just terrible when you aren’t taken, but when you take your own life.

I hope that my understanding of God’s grace is right. And that one day, we will meet again.

If they allow mohawks in Heaven, I will know how to find you.

Love forever.

JP.

_______________________________________

This is pretty raw, I posted it before I could talk myself out of it. When I was in High School, my best friend took his life. That was 20 years ago, and it still hurts today. Maybe this can help someone. Writing it helped me.

Alex is obviously not my friend's name, but might be. You're always supposed to change names when you write these sort of things.

He was a clown for a living, and an aspiring artist and musician. A quite a ladies man. The death of Robin Williams triggered a flood in me and this is what came of it. It is odd how so many people who make a living making us laugh seem to die of sadness. 

There are some hopeful and awesome things that come out of this story, but that is not the focus today. 

Please, if you read this and are contemplating suicide, or self-harm of any kind; reach out to a teacher, a pastor, a friend, even a stranger. Anyone. Most problems in life are temporary. Suicide is permanent. There is so much more to life than what you are going through, so don’t take it.

Nine: Watch Your Steps

http://www.esvbible.org/Ecclesiastes+5/

Louie Giglio's little book, “The Air I Breathe” made an impression on me. The book is a discussion of worship, and at the heart of worship is attitude. Early on Louie notes how casually we go about coming to a worship service. More often than not, a stop at the church is sandwiched in between any number of other commitments from a stop at the café, to a post church lunch or brunch, then to the mall, the movies, or the ballfield. These additional stops are issues of conscience. If you can conscience a stop at Barnes and Noble on the way home from church, then more power to you. But if you are sitting through service, wondering if they have any cool new Doctor Who stuff since the last time you were there, you should be paying attention to the service! And that is part of the problem nowadays. We sort of cram church in to our already distracted schedule.

I am well aware of dangers of equating church attendance with spiritual maturity and devotion, what we are talking about here is something more.

When you are in worship, are you there?

How did you prepare before you get there?

If you are not there, invested, the question becomes, “Why did you come?” We should try to make the best of that time.

Guard your steps, as in, don’t just run in talking away on your mobile or whatever. Take a breath, put your device and you on airplane mode, and head in to worship and revere God. While I am on the subject, I wonder if some times, we spend too much time talking to one another at church and not enough time talking to God.

If we come to God, to make a request, or a vow, etc. even though he knows our thoughts, we should think the thing through, and bring it to God in a manner worthy of Him. God will hear a “quick prayer” as we call it where I live, typically full of fillers like, “Um” and “Lord God”, but shouldn’t we give more consideration as we approach the Creator? 

And I am just as guilty, certainly talking to myself here, and using too many words to do so!

Our society prizes people who spew like a fire hydrant without the cap on. God wishes for us to reason out what we are going to say, to one another, to him, and to be careful to recall that “where there are many words, transgression is unavoidable.”

When you do make a vow, keep it. Even if it is difficult to keep. I would hope that very few times in my life have I renegotiated or left a vow unfulfilled. God help me if it was to Him. But we so often do vow to God, or to our church, or to others. When you make a vow, keep it. It is better to not vow, than to vow and not pay; otherwise there will be consequences.

Verses 3 and 7 are linked. There are more than a few daydreamers out there. They hope that their dreaming will bring about what they want more than work. Talk, and dream all you want, but it is work and God’s blessing that bring reward.

Better Unborn?

Start here: http://biblehub.com/nasb/ecclesiastes/4.htm

Could it be that it is better to be dead than alive? If that is the case, could it be even better if you had never been born? Solomon seems to think so. There is corruption in the courthouse, and in the church house, and in the school house, and as such, the cry of the oppressed is faintly heard if at all, and often ignored. 

For us who have to go about the business of living, it is going to be difficult. We’re going to work, and it going to be hard. Some people are going to do nothing, but they will reap the consequences of that (eventually). Then there is the wisdom that being poor, and living a quiet life might not be so bad. Many wealthy people wish their life was as simple one. I think about Johnny Cash’s song, “Country Boy”.

There is also this single guy, and he works harder than anyone, and for what reason? In the end, who is he going to leave it to?

It is better to work hand in hand with someone else; you will stay warmer, and if you ever get in a fight, you will win.

And in the end, a young wise man is better than an old fool, but still, whatever he does he will be forgotten eventually. (I find this amusing because Solomon may well have been talking about himself.) 

Now, go get em…

Or maybe that is not all.

Who will cry out for the poor? And who is it that will lead wisely? And who will be the faithful friend?

Remember that the message of Ecclesiastes in part is that what we see around us is futile. Because of this, we hanker for Heaven. We have a sense of homelessness that leads us to home.

From this hopelessness can spring hope. Sometimes it is only in seeing the impermanence of what we desire that we can finally long for God. 

Maybe Solomon was not saying any the above, but I suspect that he was.