I’ve discussed in blog posts before how our lives are analogous with a tapestry. We focus on the backside where the ends of the threads are knotted and tangled in an unrecognizable mess. Often, we’re so trapped in our circumstances, we can’t see beyond them. But it’s the front of the tapestry where God’s focus is—the outcome, when all is said and done. He uses the messiness and chaos to create something beautiful and unique for our good and His eternal glory.
The first time I’d ever heard this analogy was the week before Christmas sixteen years ago as my daughter lay in a coma. I’d been living in the waiting room of the neuro-ICU pacing and praying alongside another family—grown children of a woman who had attempted suicide and landed in the hospital with a serious brain injury. It was one of her daughters who shared this with me as she tried to make sense of the red flag-warnings they’d all ignored until it was too late.
I’d never met this family until we were dropped into each other’s nightmares. But when you spend endless hours with strangers waiting for a good report, you become intimately involved in their lives. The woman who shared the visual of the tapestry had no idea that I would cling to that analogy as an anchor for hope over the next several years as trial after trial brought me closer to Jesus.
Hope. It’s such a small word, yet holds so much power. Without it, we can easily fall prey to depression, desolation, and despair. It’s an easy to thing to tell someone to put their hope in Jesus, but the how of it is much more difficult. We have to get to a place where we truly trust that God has only our best in mind, even when it appears otherwise.
I look back on my brother’s suicide, which was the inspiration for Providence, and see God’s hand in that situation. When I asked the Lord “Why?” it wasn’t with the mindset of laying blame or questioning His sovereignty. What I needed was to see how the tapestry of Michael’s life, which ended tragically, would play into eternal glory, because I feared the same end for my son, Christopher.
From the time Christopher was very young, he had a deep affection for his Uncle Mike. They were so much alike, they could have been father and son, rather than uncle and nephew. They were built alike—tall and lanky—and had that quick wit that made them fun to be around. But they also had a penchant for a doom and gloom attitude, which would later reveal itself as bipolar disorder. Tragically, that revelation would come too late to save Michael. The same couldn’t be said of my son.
Christopher was a bona-fide Jesus-freak as a child. He shared the gospel message with anyone who would listen, just like his Uncle Mike. He was devout in his belief and asked questions that were often too hard for me to answer. There was a fine line between right and wrong, and he wanted to be sure he’d land on the side of right every time.
This unusual devotion to Jesus is what his molester used against him, and what had Christopher walking away from his relationship with God. What child in similar circumstances wouldn’t question the sovereignty of Jesus? “If Jesus was my closest friend, why would he allow this to happen to me?” It begs the question in the mind of a young boy—if He is sovereign, He could have stopped it. So, either Jesus was just a great man in history with no claim to deity, or He didn’t care enough to stop the abuse. Either way, Christopher’s heart closed down.
Although God allowed this to happen to my son, he did not cause it. By the time I found out about the molestation, years later, I’d become a born-again Christian who could see past my son’s pain into the glory God would one day reveal. Had I not been immersed in the Word of God and not learned of His true character, my faith might have suffered the same fate as Christopher’s. This is an ongoing journey, and it will continue until God’s perfect timing brings it to rest. Our characters are shaped from the difficulties we live through. No one God used in the Bible ever had it easy. The apostle Paul is the perfect example.
But God is faithful to finish what He started in my son. He will not allow a devout boy’s journey to end in tragedy. He used my brother’s suicide to open Christopher’s eyes to the devastation choosing death over life plays out for those left behind, which may have been what stayed Christopher’s hand during his darkest days. He will use what Christopher has suffered from for his own good and God’s eternal glory.
This is where my hope lies.
If you or a loved one is contemplating suicide, there is help. Contact the Suicide Prevention Hotline. Their phone number is 1-800-273-8255 or go to their website.
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