It’s the first week of October and its been a tough one.  I work  for a High School in the office.  I work the front desk, I am the face of the school the first contact and I have a lot of contact with the students.  I live in a large city and there are several High Schools near by.  At two different High Schools we have had two 17 year olds who committed  suicide.  Depression related. My heart breaks for these students families, because they are planning funerals instead of where these kids are going to school next year.  One did it on Monday the second on Tuesday.  I spent most of the day talking to students who were their friends about what depression is like and how dark it is, and that the voices that they were hearing no one could break through. These students are young and dramatic and I don’t think they understood, but I listened and listened and consoled the best I could.

So what do you say? I can tell you what I didn’t say.  I didn’t admit to anything.  I would never tell people that I understand that darkness, that these students faced.  I didn’t tell them that I have seen the road that they traveled down, heard the voices calling down into the darkness.  I have felt the desperation, the loneliness, the isolation of that kind of darkness. How close it has come to me.  It has sat on my back for a day taunting me keeping me in a state of panic, till I could not resist anymore and it smothered me. How that night my husband came home and saved me.  The darkness and its lies are strong.  When you face them and need to fight them it’s not a “lets brighten up ” moment.  It’s a Godly intervention type of moment.  Where you need the prayers of the saints and someone to take your hand and save you.  There is no strength, there is no will, that type of fight, takes it all out of you to the point where you don’t fight, you die.

But for these two boys, they did not die alone.  They may have planned it that way, they may have thought they were totally alone.  But Jesus was with them.  In John 15 Jesus says” though you did not choose me, I choose you” and “You are no longer servants I call you friends”.  Psalm 23″ Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me”.  Jesus went with these boys.  A shadow can only be cast when there is a light.  Death is the shadow, God is the light. Jesus made it possible to pass from the dark to light. Jesus said on the cross “forgive them for they do not know what they do”  He was praying to God to forgive the men who were murdering him.  But I think this prayer to his father is also for these two boys for they were surrounded by the darkness and they did not know what they were doing.

If you suffer from depression you can only resist the darkness with the power of the light.  You can only resist the temptation of depression and the voices and the negativity with help from the God who loves you.  We can not do it with out him. If you know someone with depression, be alert.  Anything sudden, mood change from dark to happy or the other way, any thing that makes you stop for the slightest second and wonder where they are heading.  Stop them, be with them, talk to them or maybe just listen.  It may be the life you save.