Life Altering Tragedy: Reflections (Part 10)

Categories: Léo’s Insights 2022-2023, Reflections

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Some things just cannot be predicted, yet when they do happen, we often clearly see the signs indicating they would.  As good parents, we knew our youngest son was experiencing some extremely difficult things in his life because we were experiencing them with him.  We felt his pain, experienced his despair and saw his despondency.  When he ended his life, a part of ours died too.

I cannot presume to be able to remember the multitude of lessons learned through this tragic event, but I will try my best to summarize what was learned, starting here and continuing through to the end of this series.

The Lessons
There is no way we could have survived this life-changing event had we not had a strong faith in God.  This is not to say we did not have our moments of questioning, even anger, but we at least had the assurance of God’s love and understanding.  Even more importantly, we had an intrinsic, heart-felt confidence of our son’s having finally escaped the very worst of human tyranny, into the indescribable love of his Lord and Saviour.  This did not change the fact that he was gone and it did not lessen our pain, grief and sorrow, but it did give us the blessed hope that provided the comfort and peace we needed to make it through each moment of every day.

We are social beings and so every decision made by every individual has far-reaching consequences for many.  While our son’s passing may have ended his problems, they were actually passed on to those he left behind.

We were very blessed to have so many people reach out to us, consoling and comforting us during this time of intense pain.  However, through this experience, I was made aware of a modern day shortfall of the Christian faith.  We rightly address Jesus as the Son of God, but we are neglecting the importance of Him also being the Son of Man.  When missing this key point, we de-humanize Jesus and diminish his earthly ministry of redemption for mankind to a futuristic hope, disqualifying His daily presence in our lives.  This provided little comfort to us as we needed His humanity more than His divinity during this base and guttural experience with life and death.  What would have comforted us would have been for someone to remind us that Jesus had also experienced the loss of loved ones during His time on earth.

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