That's Extortion!

A very good friend of mine works at a group home for teenage girls. These are girls that cannot be cared for by family and that have often been abused in foster care as much or more as in their family life. My friend has worked there for several years, although these days she's just on-call. But last night she was filling in for someone, and she had an experience she has never run into before and will never forget.

One of the girls tried to take her own life.

My friend was working with two other staff. One of the girls had been bathing, and the staff realized she had been in the bath awhile. One of the staff went to tell the girl that it was time to get out of the bath, and the girl responded with "Okay" or something like that. So the staff member initially didn't have any reason to believe anything was wrong, and she was going to give the girl 5 more minutes in the bath. Instantly the voice of God came to her and said "Don't wait!", so she ran and got the key to the door and opened it as quickly as possible. What she found was unimaginable, (my friend said it was "something out of a horror movie") and I won't go into any more detail, but the girl was barely alive.

That staff member who found her and another staff were filled with the spirit of God in that moment of crisis and were able to do everything they needed and had been trained to do. My friend ran to call 911. The paramedics were able to stabilize her and rushed her to the hospital. Thank God, she is physically going to be fine, although she will be in the mental health ward for some time. However, the paramedics said that if the staff had waited the 5 more minutes before interrupting her bath, she would not have survived.

Unfortunately all the other girls in the home witnessed what what went on and were seriously traumatized, so the girls home has a a crisis counseling team going there tonight to talk with the girls. My friend happened to already have an appointment with her counselor for this evening, and I'm so glad she has someone she trusts to work through this with her.

I'm sorry, but I'm crying as I write this because when I was 13, I tried to take my own life. I won't go into details, suffice to say I had my reasons at the time. This shakes me to my core the more I think about it. I can hardly believe now that I thought death was a better option than life, but I can so relate to how this girl felt last night. I know how hopeless it can seem.

Why is it so hard to see beyond our despair? Why does it seem that we will never survive tomorrow? I mean, I understand the factual answer to these questions (life circumstances), but why can we not hope? As I think on this, I realize that much of the key to this is unconditional love. Not just friendship, not just having parents or siblings. It's about having someone love us so much that they would die.

When I was hoping to die, Jesus said even in my sin of despair, satan had no right to demand my life, because He (Jesus) had already paid all of satan's demands for all time. This shocked me because I had never thought of it that way. Having been a good Baptist, I always thought of Jesus' death as payment for sin because God requires sacrifice - but really in much simpler, much more accurate terms:

If God is life, satan is death.
Jesus's gave His life to defeat satan,
because satan would otherwise demand death of us.
In His death, Jesus has ensured life for us.

I know this might be theologically abstract, and I know I'm not articulating that very well through my tears. Please forgive me and try to hear what I'm saying. Jesus had already paid the price that the devil would would want to extract from me for the sin of despair. This knowledge gave me complete and utter peace even in those present circumstances; and even in all the circumstances that have followed in my life, even to this day. Satan was allowed to kill Jesus so that we would never owe anything to satan.

Jesus gave the devil his due so we don't have to.
Satan thought he had won, but Jesus had the last laugh in His return to Life.

We can look to the cross and know that satan has no right to demand that we take our own life, even in our despair. Satan will whisper to us that we are unloved, unworthy, unimportant, because he wants to see us die. That is satan's ultimate goal. He is forever trying to get us to choose death over life: in our sin, in our hate, in our despair.

But because of Jesus, in my ultimate despair, I was able to say "Damnit satan, I belong to Jesus, and because you already killed Jesus, you have no right to ask me to die!"

Hell if I'm going to pay again for something that has already been paid for.

That's extortion!

Amen.