What Now? Part 1

 The news of my husband's suicide attempt I received that day, was both crushing and shocking. I immediately began to shake uncontrollably. While desperate pleas for relief were howling in my head, only hollow breathy attempts to express them escaped my quivering lips. Horror gripped me, and swept my breathing into a rapid pace matched only by my racing heart. I quickly realized it was a blessing that it was my brother, and not me, driving to our desired destination.

"How could this happen?", I asked so quietly only God could hear. "Life as I knew it just blew up in my face, and I'm...devastated. I wasn't there to see or hear, but the disturbing images relentlessly assault my brain, while it works to try and fill in the blanks of the details I don't know." For 7 hours my husband laid in nearly half of the blood that had escaped from his body before he realized he'd failed and he was too weak to succeed at his attempt.

"It's not your fault child," God responded. "It has nothing to do with you. Nothing you could have said or done would have prevented it. This is his journey, and this is not the end".

My mind went into overdrive trying to figure out "what now". He was the sole provider for our family, and we still had 2 children living at home. For 27 years, he'd suffered a lot of pain and distress emotionally, which heightened his anxiety and deepened his desperation and depression. He complained of pain in his feet, his hands, his back, and his neck. He required accommodations to his diet, his morning routine, throughout areas of our home, and in his office space at work. With time, his interactions with family, work peers, and members of our church congregation, became less and less as he sunk deeper into despair. Just 2 months earlier he'd woke up one morning and said "I can't go to work anymore."

"So I'm running the house...paying the bills, taking care of kids, dealing with homework, making sure all school meetings, conferences, events and concerts are attended (because what child doesn't want their parents there to see them shine?), paying the taxes, doing the grocery shopping, washing and folding mountains of laundry...you get the idea...and now I need to go to school full-time (because I chose marriage and children over an education), and work full-time as well?"

"How is that humanly possible God?!?!?!?"

And he softly and matter-of-factly responded "It isn't dear". That was all he said, But he sat with me for a very, very long time, and held me close, and wiped my tears. And I felt the truth of his message to me.

I didn't have an answer for "what now?", but I knew it didn't include a herculean effort to keep my family afloat.