The power of Love, Hope and Faith in a Lonely World
Erich Mische
If you have 40 minutes you can SAVE a life by taking this online course at save.org/programs/education-and-training
This past Tuesday I got a text message from one of the Eucharistic Adoration Coordinators at Saint Ambrose Catholic Community asking me if I was planning to be at my designated 5:00 a.m. Thursday morning slot.
After assuring them I would be, I received the following text:
"I wanted to ensure that you would be there so Jesus is not left alone in the Chapel."
Now, I would be lying if my immediate reaction to that message wasn't a mixture of bemusement, alarm and guilt.
Guilt because I had missed my previous two commitments for work reasons that may or may not matter to Jesus. Alarm because it never truly occurred to me that Jesus would be left alone because I didn't show up. And bemusement that my Catholic guilt has rarely dissipated at 61-years-old when I get a text message making it clear I let Jesus down.
Over the course of the past week on my morning walks I thought more and more about that text message and the concept of being "...left alone" and the impact such feelings of loneliness can have on all of us.
The U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has identified the concept, and reality, of loneliness as a public health crisis. Long after the worst of the COVID pandemic has been put behind us, with the isolation those times brought to many of us, we are still struggling with being lonely.
Being lonely can be, obviously, about being physically alone. That, in and of itself, can have devastating consequences on one's life.
It's no great shock that human beings, forced - physically or otherwise - to be alone and solitary experience anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and psychosis.
There is, to be sure, more about being alone that the absence of someone physically with you. We are all, often, in situations in which we feel mentally, emotionally and spiritually alone.
For many of us, those moments can be excruciating, painful, depressing and...lonely.
I've experienced, and experience, both in my own life. I experience it in my day-to-day life and in my professional life as the Executive Director of SAVE - Suicide Awareness Voices of Education
There are times, to be sure, that I deliberately seek solitude. As a young man I would often go for walks for hours upon end by myself simply to get lost in my thoughts. Today, as a not young man, I do the same - less to get lost in my thoughts, and more to focus, increase my physical activity and pray for a whole host of things in my life.
The three most important words in my vocabulary are: Love, Hope and Faith.
I try my best to never leave my house or end a day in any conversation with my family without telling them I love them. I've sometimes deliberately turned my car around after leaving the house to make sure I didn't forget to do that - or made up some reason to linger around the house in the morning to make sure I've said it.
I say it to my dog, too, just to be safe!
Hope and Faith, though, are not always so easy to visually demonstrate, though. Yes, on my Hope On The River - Spare Key trip the metaphor of Hope was always present in both the idea, the execution and the return. So, too, was Faith. After all, you have to have a healthy reservoir of both if you're going to undertake a journey in which you have no clear sense of whether you will succeed in the end.
So, why does any of all of this matter to me? Or to my life? Or my work?
It matters because we know there are many protective factors in helping to prevent suicide. We also know there are many ways to support suicide loss survivors.
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Hope and Faith are not empty words in the fight to save lives or to support those who have lost a loved one to suicide.
They are real and powerful words, and increasingly, they are critical tools in an era and age of loneliness as a public health crisis. In 2012 the nation's National Strategy for Suicide Prevention identified faith leaders as important allies in the fight to prevent suicide.
In a document that is the by-product of the work of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention the Suicide Prevention Resource Center and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, there is a concrete focus on how leaders in the faith community can, and do, impact suicide prevention efforts particularly among youth.
Not by focusing on the denominational aspects of religion, but on the powerful force of Hope and Faith in the lives of young people. I know that in my own life in college I found faith leaders like Peg Chemberlin to not be the sources of my religious involvement, but in helping me tie my faith to my lived experiences at the time.
The power of faith leaders to have an impact in saving lives is both prevention and postvention. For the young, the middle-age and the elderly.
This document, Hope: A Guide for Faith Leaders to Help Prevent Youth Suicide, can be found here:
Here's why this - and all the other efforts organization's such as SAVE - make to prevent suicide: We are starting to see suicidal ideation and suicide become its own mental health crisis for preteen children - particularly girls and young black and Hispanic children.
In one online publication that reports on the National Institute of Mental Health report, this chilling sentence underscores something that is nearly incomprehensible:
"Suicide has now become the fifth leading cause of death among both male and female preteens, report a team led by Donna Ruch, of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio."
We live in an era of immense polarization for a multiple of reasons. We also live in a time of increasing feelings of loneliness and hopelessness.
Yet, we live in a time when there's never been more resources available to nearly all of us to help others and to help ourselves.
To help yourself if you are in crisis, feeling lonely or helpless, you can and should text 988. It's free. It's available 24 hours a day. It's confidential. It's for you.
To help others by learning about how you can gain the tools to prevent suicide you can take our online 45-minute training called One Step Ahead at https://www.save.org/.../education-and.../one-step-ahead/
I will keep the text message reminding me to not leave Jesus alone in the chapel for all time. Not so much as a reminder that I shouldn't forget my next scheduled adoration time, but more to remember to be mindful that none of us should forget that all of us are in this life together.
We may come from different backgrounds, lived experiences, and be experiencing different situations in our lives.
The truth is all of us matter.
All of us matter all the time.
You. And me. We are not alone.