If I Should Die Before I Wake...

Today, two Facebook comments/statuses caught my attention. One was from a college student who used to be in my youth group and one was a comment on a thread discussing the Brittany Maynard "Dying with Dignity" story that has gone viral.

I'm confused... How can we be so sad about Robin Williams' suicide but then celebrate when a woman decides her lethal injection date?I'm not condemning her choice OR supporting it, as I am not in her position and I won't pretend like I am and cast judgement. However, society blindly believes something is great, just because a news story says so. Wake up and use your intelligence people! Gain a perspective or two.. this isn't black & white.

"To herald someone who ends their own life to avoid suffering is to cheapen the long and courageous suffering of those who fight to the finish."

I threw the second one, the comment on a thread from the Brittany Maynard story up on my Facebook wall to see what reaction it would get. 

I was really surprised that there wasn't much reaction at all, and it occurred to me that I have been quiet on this subject for awhile too because....

Well...

I wasn't sure what to think. 

I firmly believe in the seamless garment mentality when it comes to life issues - that life is sacred from conception until natural death. 

In this case, Brittany Maynard was diagnosed with a severe, rapid forming brain cancer. After being given the news that she would only have months to live, she chose not to try radiation and attempt to fight it, but rather to choose the day that she will die. November 1st. 

All Saints Day. 

She described her ideal death... painless... surrounded by people she loves.. with music in the background. This, to her, is dying with dignity.

Other than the fact that even though some words have been changed to make it sound a bit more rosy than it is... this *IS* a suicide. It IS taking one's own life. So the question comes down to.... why is it a beautiful thing in the eyes of society in Brittany's case, but so very tragic and disappointing in someone like Robin Williams' case? Are not/were not both seeking an end to their suffering? 

I came to know an amazing, amazing man, Chris Faddis, through his Facebook updates on the diagnosis, fight, and eventual death of his wife Angela.  I didn't know them personally, but saw their Facebook support group and prayed and grieved with them during their battle with cancer. I was blessed to meet Chris when I invited him to come to my parish in Michigan and share his story with us. And one thing I can say, for absolute certainty... 

Angela died with dignity. 

Her cancer didn't rob her of her dignity. Our suffering does not rob us of our dignity. 

This is why Mother Teresa formed a Home for the Dying. She said:  

"Death with dignity is to die with grace, in the knowledge that [you] are loved."

I have witnessed so, so many people battle cancer and other diseases and cancer, while it is a horrible, monstrous disease, taking our loved ones away from us through slow pain and suffering.... There remains dignity and beauty in each patient. Though we can't always see it through our sadness, anger, and our fears.

Angela Faddis was with her loved ones when she died. Angela was able to love and be loved right to and through her very last breath. She fought for every moment. 

Cancer has touched our family and cancer is a word that pierces the heart at its mere utterance. It takes our breath away, leaving us suffocating for air. 

But it cannot take our dignity. We are more than our health. We are more than the diseases we suffer or the crosses we bear. We have dignity because we are loved. Even the homeless man on the street of Calcutta, with no family, no friends, and no one even knows his name... is loved. The Missionaries Sisters of Charity show the dying love. 

This is death with dignity.  

We don't choose to suffer our disease or ailment because we believe there is some mysterious virtue we can only attain by martyring ourselves. We choose to suffer because we choose to live, and suffering is part of life. 

I will be praying for Brittany Maynard. I won't be praying for her to change her mind about taking her own life. I will be praying for her to realize that death with dignity happens because we are loved and not reduce death with dignity to a pain free death. The pain will end for all of us some day. But may every moment we have be a moment that matters. 

Whether I am diagnosed one day with cancer, or suffer trauma from a car accident, or carry the enormous weight of mental illness... I pray that my family helps me to fight, knowing each moment is sacred. And when it's time to let me go, they can do it knowing the battle is over and we loved each other till the last drop. 

"No Religion Can Transform Evil into Good" (Guest Post by Fr. Terrance Klein)

This Homily was given by the Associate Pastor of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Dodge City, Kansas this weekend, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. I was very moved by the message and asked Fr. Terrance Klein to send it to me so that I could share with you all. I bolded the parts that hit home for me. It is important to remember you and I are being persecuted - we don't feel ill effects at the moment, but the mere fact that our brothers and sisters around the world are suffering and dying because they share our faith is a persecution we should feel keenly in our hearts. Please, take action. Pray and support Catholic Relief Services. See my previous blog for how you can help. 

Peace - Noelle

THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS

Fr. Terrance Klein

Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe

09.14.2014

Numbers 21: 4b-9   Philippians 2: 6-11   John 3: 13-17

About one third of the world’s population is Christian.  Each year, more than twenty-five million people are baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  And each year, about one hundred thousand Christians are martyred, coming to share fully in the death of Christ.

There has never been a century since Christ in which Christians did not give their lives for the faith.  From the beginning they were acknowledged as martyrs, those whose witness to Christ was writ in blood.  But, whether one considers numbers or percentages, put bluntly, as John Allen does in his 2013 The Global War on Christians, we are “today indisputably are the most persecuted religious body on the planet” 

Allen’s book easily marshals examples.  “The evangelical group Open Doors, devoted to monitoring anti-Christian persecution, estimates that one hundred million Christians worldwide presently face interrogation, arrest, torture, or even death because of their religious convictions.”  

For example, in 2008, in northeastern India “a series of riots ended with as many as five hundred Christians killed, many hacked to death by machete-wielding Hindu radicals, thousands more were injured; and at least fifty thousand were left homeless.”  

In Nigeria the militant Islamic group Boko Haram “is held responsible for almost three thousand deaths.”  Like its counterpart in Egypt, Christians and their churches are targeted.  

In North Korea “roughly a quarter of the country’s two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand Christians are believed to be living in forced labor camps because of their refusal to join the national cult around founder Kim Il Sung…Some three hundred thousand Christians in North Korea have simply disappeared and are presumed to be dead.”

Before the first Gulf War, more than a million and a half Iraqis were Christians, whose origins dated to the age of the apostles.  A year ago, after relentless bombings and unrestrained persecution, the number of them in Iraq was close to one hundred thousand.  That was before the rise of ISIS and its declaration that there is nothing to give Christians “but the sword.”  This summer, in Mosul, Christians, including children, have been beheaded, even crucified. 

When unprecedented numbers of Christians are being murdered, what does it mean to celebrate—this year during our Sunday liturgies—the Exaltation of the Cross?  The Church Father Tertullian said that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,” but this seed should never be blithely scattered. Even as the Church celebrates her most faithful witnesses, she must also mourn their deaths.  

The Church exists to midwife the Kingdom of God, which is one of peace and justice.  She cannot ignore the injustice, the violence, perpetrated against her own people.  The meaning of this feast cannot be that it is good for men and women to die violently for the faith because, in doing so, they imitate Christ.  To exult the cross is not to celebrate violence, neither that inflicted upon Jesus nor upon his followers.

One cannot suggest that what happened on Calvary, two millennia ago, cancels the contemporary evil perpetrated against Christians, or anyone else.  The meaning of the cross is not that violence has been transformed into something that we proclaim—paradoxically, with an eye toward the world to come—as good.  That would make the cross of Christ an enemy of men and women, because what is evil—and his crucifixion surely was—cannot be baptized by blather into something good.

If the cross were simply a human horror, made inspirational by centuries of whitewashing piety, then to exult Calvary would be to perpetrate the very evil cited by many critics of religion.  It would be akin to that perversion of authentic Islam, which tells the fanatically violent that Paradise awaits them.  

The cross cancels our calculations. From the earth, looking up at its beams, at his bloodied, outstretched arms, it defies sense.  Those who stood beneath the cross saw it as the death of all their hopes, the terrible judgment of God upon the wickedness of earth.  

Only God can comprehend the cross, which is to say that no human dares to assign its meaning.  To call the cross the great mystery of God is to rebuke every human effort to domesticate the divine.  The death of Jesus upon the cross is not a past event that makes the present palatable for the persecuted.  

No, we must see the cross as the eternal, the standing-outside-of-time, the ever ancient and ever new decision of God, which is to enter into the abasement of sin and its consequent suffering.  Christians don’t go to their violent deaths because Christ went to Calvary.  Christ embraces the wood of the cross because the innocent died before him, died after him, continue to die.  

The cross draws all of human history—past, present, and future—into those outstretched arms.  The will of God—Father, Son, and Spirit—is revealed there.  The meaning of history is curiously carved into its wood.  

He emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross (Phil 2: 7-8).

No religion can transform evil into good.  Evil is absolute inanity, the complete absence of the good.  You cannot directly choose to do evil to accomplish the good.  Those who try only diminish the good, in themselves and the world.  

You can suffer evil, like the martyrs, or resist it, like those who fight to restrain it.  Martyrs are not passive, and soldiers are not evil.  They are righteous in resisting.  But there is a reason that the cross of Christ belongs on ambulances and not at the head of armies.  Christ chooses to suffer the cross.  Note the present tense of the verb.  Christ chooses.  It will never enter the past tense until the world, its sin and suffering, is gathered to him.

╬╬╬

The Casualties of Suicide

This is probably the most passionate article I have ever and will ever write. I have perused the threads on this topic, in the larger context of Robin Williams' death until I've been physically ill over the comments and debates. It is almost impossible to not offend someone when commenting on the sensitive issues of depression and suicide.

I am someone who has been on both sides of the issue and just feel the cathartic need to share some very important thoughts - thoughts that are rarely considered in the debates that I have been witnessing, and it is truly a tragedy in and of itself that such an important topic has become laced with anger and division. We are speaking of life and death, and the utter war people wage on a daily basis between the two.

From the inside, suicide is never an act of free will unless it is in the context of suicide bomber. It is a result of the devastatingly painful loss of hope. When I was a teenager, suicide seemed like the only way. I felt I had no options and I lived in a very, very dark place in my heart. I was scared I would go to hell if I killed myself, and that ultimately saved my life, but I do wonder if had I not had a life-changing experience of the love of God at a retreat, if I would have cared about that at all. For the seriously depressed, it is the legitimate belief that the world would be better off without you. It is the legitimate belief that people will not care if you are gone. It is the legitimate belief that the pain will all be over soon. It is not a rational thinking process. There is no weighing of the pros and cons.

Many, many medications that are supposed to control these desperate feelings actually contribute to them. I remember someone very close to me would one second be a zombie, and the next completely unhinged. I looked up the medications and found that manic episodes was a side effect. Being on a medication doesn't necessarily fix the problem. Many counselors, psychiatrists, and psychologists through no fault of their own struggle to understand the depth of the issue. Depression is a physical ailment, a disease, much like cancer. It is a cancer of the mind but people who suffer it are often ostracized because it can be draining to be around someone with depression. It can be maddening to have to excuse certain behaviors because of mental illness and the inability to reason with that person. It is frustrating to not be able to heal it quickly or in a specific time period as you would heal a broken leg. It is the unseen blackness that spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and sometimes even physically kills.

From the outside, suicide is a selfish, abusive act. It is something none of us who know people who have killed or tried to kill themselves can fully understand. The anger and volatile grief that arise from the living victims of suicide are just as legitimate as those of the person who lost the will to live, and we must not forget that. Those loved ones that discover in shock the body of a friend or family member will forever have that last image etched in their mind. Those loved ones who will forever live with the guilt that maybe they could have done more even if nothing more could have been done will find it hard to move forward. Those angry and disillusioned feelings are entirely valid and should be given the same respect as those who are suffering the depression themselves. Even Scripture says that when one part of the body suffers, the rest of the body suffers.  Most of the people I know who struggle with depression are aware of the sad reality that it affects all of their relationships. There are others who don't, because they legitimately cannot feel empathy in the midst of their own struggles. There are those who care deeply for those who struggle with depression but have no idea how to help.

People struggle on different levels with depression and so our experiences vary greatly, but I will never, ever, ever, ever tell someone that their feelings on that matter are not valid. That would be like telling someone who has stage 1 cancer that they can't possibly be as scared and suffering as someone with stage 4 cancer. Everyone's individual experience is valid, it is their own, and not one of us has the right to tell someone otherwise.

What we can do is pray, reach out, come forward with our struggles, seek help, advocate for help for others, and do our best to just be present to those who need us, even if by their own choice in suffering, they have isolated themselves.

Don't ever, EVER tell someone they don't understand. Because some things, we just don't know.

Every life has worth. Every life is worth fighting for, and God proved His love in showing us that every life is worth dying for.

And as I finish writing this very emotional post, I ask for prayers. As we speak, someone I love very much is in the ER for a mental health related issue.

Thank you and God bless.

He IS Loving You Through This

"I Praise You for I am Wonderfully Made"

This is my most requested talk. The story of my testimony from cutting and suicidal thoughts because of my low self-esteem... to national speaking and music ministry stemming from a moment in time where I realized God's incredible, amazing, awesome, inexhaustible love for me. 

See... I used to cut because I hated myself. I hated that God didn't make me beautiful.  It's true. By all societal and physical standards, I was not beautiful. I was overweight, had braces/crooked teeth, dressed sloppily (in part because I hated my appearance anyway), had bad acne, etc. I felt my whole life revolved around my being ugly. I was shy. I was jealous of my younger siblings and the attention they got - I'm the oldest - and I didn't have really any close friends. 

I used to cut, because I used to hurt. 

That emotional pain was a struggle. I stayed up late and I slept late. I napped after lunch. I was lazy. I over ate. I just didn't care about life and didn't feel like I had a purpose in this life. 

I attended a retreat when I was about fifteen that changed nothing yet changed everything. In this retreat Doug Barry from Radix did a one man Passion Play where he described and acted out the Passion. He described every graphic, bloody detail of the death of our Lord in a way that I had never really heard or even understood before. I never knew the pain and humiliation He went through for me. More than that, I never knew the desperation He felt for my soul. 

Hearing this for the first time, and experiencing worship in Adoration for the first time, rocked me to the core. It was undeniable that my Savior loves me. 

And that is enough. 

That was enough for me to stop cutting and to start healing and loving God, loving myself, and loving others. 

I didn't change right away. Some things changed pretty slowly - like getting my braces off! - and some things didn't change - like battling insecurity, but I am worlds away from the person I used to be, because I've learned to turn to the Lord in these difficult moments where I am struggling to love others, myself, or even Him. 

This past year has been extremely difficult, but I know I can't complain too much. So many people have it harder than I do. We have, however, been very blessed in spite of the challenges. 

Still... some days, it was hard to get out of bed. Not because I was depressed, but because I knew the day was full of many difficult things to do and many things that I felt I just couldn't handle. I didn't want to face the pile of things that had to be done. 

One moment. 

One moment, one moment with Christ changed my life. 

One moment is powerful!!!!! It is a point in time which can never be repeated. 

During these past few weeks, months... through every hurdle I faced, my marriage faced, or my family faced.. I just took one moment to say, "Help me Jesus. I trust You."

Even if I struggled with the words... 

And I got out of bed. 

Those times when we feel we can't face the day. It starts with taking a moment - just one moment - to ask for help. We can't stop there... we have to get up. Take that first step out of bed, out of the boat, out of the house, wherever...

We have to keep going. 

God will provide what we need and He WILL love us through each moment of the day. That love is our fire and our fuel! 

My instinct even now is not always to turn to God during a difficult time... first I need to call someone, y'all! 

I need to talk all about it and ask for advice. My husband is great at asking me, "Did you pray about this?" That sometimes makes me angry. :) But it's true... praying - really praying, not laying it all out there, talking the whole time, thinking the whole time, and coming away from "prayer" with just as much turmoil in my heart...but really praying. Just saying, "Lord, You know what I need." And listen. Surrender. 

Sometimes I imagine sitting at Jesus' feet and laying down, physically, each person or intention or worry or fear that I have at His feet. There is freedom. 

You know, though, one of the most awesome things is God isn't like that annoying boyfriend that you constantly have to call or text or you never hear from them... (Not that I have one of those anymore! )... He is just as eager to communicate with you as you are with Him. He pursues you. He pursues me. You don't have to believe me. He proved it before you even existed. 

Anyway... I really felt inspired to write this tonight. If you know someone who is hurting and needs a little encouragement, please share this blog or your own faith story!

I pray that the eyes that these words are meant for may experience the amazing love of God and come to know Him more deeply -- not out of religious obligation, but out of the desire for the relationship that will change your life forever. :)

Love. :)