LIFE, PLEASE

I'm looking at yet another headline of an exec who has ended his life. This time it's the Freddie Mac guy. Suicide has always been around, but these ones in the headlines lately are very disturbing. Not just the execs, but also the families, fathers and mothers who killed themselves and their kids, simply because they foresaw their style of life being negatively affected by a loss of money. Recently it was the couple in California who killed their children and themselves because they had been laid off. How is it that being dead is better than living with less? Have we forgotten that nothing is promised in life, and life itself will have ups and downs?

Now, don't get me wrong. I get frustrated too when things don't go according to that grand plan I had in high school and undergrad. Yes, I wanted to be CEO by now!! But, as most adults have had to learn, things in life rarely go according to plan. But, what do you do? YOU ADJUST!!!!!!
Now, I don't want to sound callous to the misery these people obviously felt. But we have to be stronger and yield to that higher authority, God, who is all sovereign. Maybe the problem is that we are not raised to realize that complete sovereignty from the beginning. Once we do, it is a little easier to handle the downturns, because we know that tomorrow is a new day with infinite possibilities.
Once you make people or things your God, you fall out of alignment. I don’t say this to be judgmental, but out of experience, because I struggle with it myself.
When you break it all down to the fundamentals, if is truly beautiful just to be alive, with the family and friends who are here with you. This is not only a cliché’. I read a quote that says something like being at peace is seeing a sunset and knowing who to thank. He has given us beauty that is around every day; we just have to stop and recognize it and be grateful. Maybe that’s why we’re born naked and cannot take our material things with us to the grave, no matter what we have accomplished or acquired.

How can you worry more about what your image will be if you have less money than about taking your kids’ lives, or your own? Embarrassment fades, and life goes on. That kind of bondage to what others’ think leads to people making many bad decisions, living beyond their means, and just being plain old silly. No one wants to face poverty, but this is America, where there are places to go to get food and shelter that other truly impoverished nations have absolutely no access to. (Anybody see Slumdog Millionaire????) Maybe if we exposed ourselves to what other people go through in other countries, we would realize it truly is not that bad.

I don’t know about you, but I love life! Disappointments and all. And I hope it would take more for me to be in despair than the loss of a job or wealth. Just my thoughts…