The Demons Within

Isa. 38: 18 For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

From RST: “Robin (Williams) was blessed with a gift to bring joy and laughter to millions of people. NO ONE THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN FULLY UNDERSTANDS THE ABOUNDING GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST! Scripture tells us not to say this one will go to heaven or this one will not. We don't have the authority. I hope he IS a brother in Christ. How about instead of passing judgment or spewing malice and hardened opinions, we who are Christ's followers lift up his family and loved ones in prayer. After all Christ IS abounding, unfathomable, never ending love. Hope, faith, and love and the greatest of these things is love. Hope to see Robin Williams in the kingdom one day! He will be missed until then.”

I read a beautiful article on suicide here.

While I’ve suffered depression and rose from the ashes, on many occasions the flames still seem to smolder never really smothered. I do have Jesus as an anchor in my life and always have but I wonder, if on the edge of suicide, will Jesus reach in and pour water on the flames surrounding you, so you don’t die? Well, we know He could, but He doesn’t impose His free will on our free will. If we consciously made the decision to kill ourselves, that is OUR CHOICE to do so, and the Lord doesn’t stop the act.

The above article really hit the nail on the head for me. Depression often feels like you’re inside a burning building and the only way out is a window that you jump through to what inevitably turns out to be your death.

You see, depression stems from a loneliness. A place where you’re surrounded by people but always feeling alone. Sometimes even a rich person, who has tons of friends, is always seemingly happy is fighting on the inside the loneliness that has enveloped him in a fiery fan of flames.

How do I explain the inner demons that we humans struggle with on a daily basis? I don’t think *I* can and I certainly don’t feel a psychiatrist can. People and doctors can try; they can provide pills to dummy you up so you don’t feel anything or give you words of encouragement, or even hand you a bible and say, “Read this, you’ll get better.”

The loneliness pit is a place where you finally take a look at YOU and you’re not happy with what you see.  I had an uncle who was a sufferer of PTSD from the remnants of the Vietnam War. He sought help and while the government gave him help it was never enough to lift him out of the pit. He had friends and even turned to them on the day he committed suicide. He went around telling them, “I’m going to jump from a bridge today, I’m done with it all.”

They all laughed and scoffed saying, “Here have a beer”, or whatever the drug of choice that was offered him, gave him no comfort, no release from the pit. They had heard it before many times, many attempts, with no success.

He went and jumped off the Francis Scott Key Bridge to his death. The problems with his prior attempts was, the bridge wasn’t high enough, so this time, he made sure it was. He had cried out and no one heard, no one took serious the seriousness of a death threat.

I imagine before Robin Williams death (pure conjecture here) when on the night before his death as his wife was leaving the house, he assured her over and over, “I’m fine, really.” Always the people pleaser, he didn’t let on to his own wife the depths of the pit he had fallen in and brushed it off in a joke and sent her on her way. He would then turn, go up the stairs and have a conversation with his loneliness, the pit of demons that let him know, “We’re here for you!”

No thought of family dwells in the pit. No external love resides there. Jesus is certainly not hanging out in the pit of your worst thoughts, you’re dangling by threads of insanity, all of which are being held by demons edging you on to a place of comfort, coddling you, caressing you, welcoming you. A place you don’t need to please anyone, a place that surrounds your mind in a blanket suffocating any thoughts except that of YOU and what YOU’VE become.

You’re not dangling in thoughts of love and family, thoughts of joy and happiness, no, you’ve taken up with the demons of comfort that are whispering all the things you want to hear; things about YOU, there’s room for no one else in the smothering pit.

When someone says they’re depressed. Whether clinically or just depressed (sad, lonely, hurt, aching) Please don’t laugh them off and hand them an answer that works for YOU, this is their battle, one you CAN’T fight for them and one you can’t lift them out of.

Don’t tell them they ‘should’ do this, or they ‘should’ do that, that is the worse thing you can say. What they need to hear is that you’re there for them. They need to know you care, and often people ‘claim’ to care and be concerned, but then they disappear thinking the person is fine. The person is in a fiery pit with their inner demons and you think they’re fine? Nice assumption!

Don’t ASSUME, be willing to listen! LISTEN, not spew should’s and should not’s, LISTEN. More than anything, while in the pit of depression, people are too eager to please OTHER people, make them laugh and smile; when all they needed was for one person to LISTEN. And no one ever has the time, to just listen.

If the many friends and family surrounding Robin Williams had LISTENED, would we be talking about his suicide? I can’t answer that, I’m only talking from my pit.

I praise the Lord every day that He stands with me in my pit, dousing the flames bit by bit, but other people don’t have the company, they are in the pit alone; alone and smothering.

If you’re ever in the pit with no one who will listen and death looks much better than facing life, please call the Suicide Hotline – 1-800-273-8255. Keep the number in a handy spot on the fridge, sometimes we never know that the person right beside us is about to make the wrong choice.

You might give up on Him, but He will NEVER give up on YOU!

God Bless You!