If you’re wondering what children could find to rejoice about when their father has just committed suicide, these are the things I remember.
When I asked my children where they thought their father was, their answer was heaven. I asked them if they thought he would be sad if he were in heaven. They said no. I explained that we would miss him and we might miss him the rest of our lives, but if they thought he was happy where he was, then would he want them to be happy here or would he want them to be miserable? So when I posed the question to them of can we find things to rejoice about even though we might be sad this is how that discussion went.
One child said, “we no longer need a new vehicle”. Great! In our house we praise God for things so I said, “Praise God!”
You see we had just grown to a family of 8 and our largest vehicle only seated 7 passengers. This meant when we all went somewhere together we had to take 2 vehicles or we’d have to buy something bigger. The choices were buy a 15 passenger van or a mini school bus! I honestly would rather have the mini school bus than a 15 passenger van. I hated the idea of driving a big van, parking it, ugh! On top of that, the cost of getting a 15 passenger van was going to be more than we could afford at the time. I’d be the one stuck driving it all the time. We had been looking for weeks and fretting over how to afford it, what to buy, should we look for a used one, etc. But now, we only have 7 in the family and not much chance of growing that number any time soon so our van that we loved we can keep! That’s one positive.
The next child said, “we get reserved parking at church now”. Oh that’s right. Praise God again! Woohoo. This was a big deal. We had joined a church that was growing extremely fast. Since the time we started when the church was only a couple hundred members, the church has become the fastest growing church in the US. That meant parking problems. We had several services with very little time between services so unless you went to the first service of the day that meant trying to secure a spot and then unload everyone, get them across the parking lot, drop all the kids at their classes and find a seat in a crowded sanctuary before it filled up. There was always at least 1 baby and 1 toddler so that often meant 2 diaper bags since they went to different classes. Carrying the baby in the baby carrier was heavy. It also didn’t help that our church was in Texas and in several months during the year this meant unbearable heat! UGH! BUT... our church provided parking spots for pregnant mothers. So there were reserved spots up front and every time I was pregnant we got to breeze into the parking lot, claim one of those and enjoy the perks. But, once that baby was born, then we were again searching for parking with everyone else. If you have two parents, I suppose that’s not so bad, but fortunately, our church also reserved parking spots up front for “single parents”. Woohoo! We get reserved parking all the time now! That was definitely a reason to rejoice.
The children thought of other things that day. I don’t remember them all but if children can find reasons to be thankful or rejoice after their father chooses to end his own life, I’m sure you can come up with something.
Want to print your doc? This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
