Chelan

I’ve never experienced what it is like to go through … a suicide…while it is happening. I’ve experienced the pain of discovering a loved one has taken their own life. But that was after the fact. It was terribly unsettling for many years. My experience with my grandma’s suicide and later, an extended cousin’s, was so different than what I watched tonight, on OPB.

“The Suicide Tourist” documented and filmed an assisted suicide of a diseased and dying man. I watched him and his wife plan every detail. I watched him as he drank the liquid that would make him fall asleep and never wake.  He was in much pain and could not walk or even breathe on his own.  His wife was so supportive. So calm, and loving. But not assuring. That is what was missing. The assurance that one has of their eternal soul, continuing on. No, he said that no one knows if there is an afterlife. And he believes that there is not one. That there is nothing. But he also mentioned having a hope. In his suicide letter to his children, he said they could still talk to him after he’s gone, but to not expect an answer. “I always have been more of an ear than a mouth”. This to me, implied that he thought there was a chance of his soul continuing on. But therein lies the depth of uncertainty – the reason why, to me, this documentary was so incredibly sad.

His wife would repeat, as he lay there dying, “have a safe journey”. But neither one knew where his journey would lead. Logically, no one really knows. Yet, many do. How? Faith in the God-breathed, Holy Spirit of God-inspired words in the Bible. Faith enables us to know. Our faith gives us the assurance we need when our human logic fails us. When we don’t understand, we have one source. The Word of God. Sola scriptura. I am grateful that I have been given the chance to learn scripture, the chance to pray and to have faith in it. I have faith in a God who created me, who lives in and works through me.  I get to live my life with him every day, talk to him and sometimes get to hear him talk to me, in the recesses of my heart. I’m thankful that I can lay my head down at night and know – I mean, be completely without doubt, that because Jesus Christ died and rose to life again, I could die in my sleep tonight, and …live. My spirit will in fact, go on. I will be with Jesus. I will be singing in heaven, along with angels. I will be looking into the eyes of my Savior.

Believing this doesn’t make it true, for me. It is true and believing it, is what gives me peace and a blessed assurance.

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(to watch it online, click HERE.)