From “Oh Robin, our Robin“:

There will be those, and I know some of them, who will speak of how selfish people must be to choose a fatal option.  In a sense, when you consider the loss, agony, and guilt that living loved ones must cope with, “selfish” seems accurate.

To address this “selfish” idea, let me invite you into the one place I can speak authoritatively about… the edge of the cliff, nearly 30 years ago…

“Again! You’ve done it again! You should know better, you really should.  You make such a mess of things.  Nobody’s got time for your nonsense.  You’d be less of a burden if you were just….gone…”

“Ok, fine, gone.  But how?  It must be successful.”

“Yes, you certainly don’t want to wake up in the hospital to find that you’ve failed at this too.  Think of the expense, and the lectures, and the embarrassment for everyone…if you’re going to do this, do it right.”

“It musn’t be messy.”

“Yes, don’t make anyone go to extra effort to clean up your mess.”

These were the swirling thoughts, intermingled with reinforcing accusations, harsh memories, known failures, and an earnest desire to bring peace to the people in my world, by getting out of the way.  Fortunately, I didn’t have access to a real cliff or waterfall.  What I did have was a Protector, and one voice that could pull me back from the edge in that moment.

The phone in the den rang as I was pacing the hall, pondering logistics.  It was 3 in the afternoon, and a voice from another college halfway across the country said:

“I’ve been thinking about you, are you ok?”

Never before or since did our conversations open that way.  My Protector had been managing logistics, ensuring that someone in my dorm would answer the phone, check my door messages, and carry information back to the caller; that the caller would call again and ask for that area of campus; that I would be in that hallway in that moment; that the caller would use that precise phrase, insisting on  an answer other than “I’m fine”; that the caller would be the one person who could counter the current flood of ugliness, when any other voice would have hit me like a tidal wave.

God’s plans, the prayers of many, the obedience of one,  and a little extra effort from an unknown kept me from joining the statistics that day.   Twenty-some years later, I was given a hard shove toward that cliff again, nothing but dark swirling thoughts below…and as I neared the guard rail, one voice spoke up:

“Dinner tonight?”

Yes, I’d love to have dinner with you, thanks for inviting me.  You may never know what a difference those two words made.

If you have been granted the privilege of speaking into someone’s life, speak honestly, lovingly, and often.  Your voice may be the one used to overcome all others when it is most important.