Suicidal? you're never alone

I know this time of year isn't easy for many people.  If you are, and this isn't to be morbid, feeling less than positive about life, please know you are never alone.  Never.  

I felt like this was a good time to share my personal struggles again, not that I'm sad or struggling today.  But it came to my attention that it might be helpful to be vulnerable and share what goes on in my own mind.

Recently I had a conversation with a good friend I've known since grade-school, this friend confessed their dark struggles and thought I couldn't possible understand.  I shared how periodically there are times I ask Tammy to hide my guns for a while.  

My friend said they had no idea about my own dark struggles, after all it seems like I have "it all together."  I do have a great marriage.  We have great friends who love us.  We live in a beautiful home.   We are doing good.  We have a successful business.  I preach in a loving church.  On the outside my life looks pretty good, and it truly is.  I'm extremally blessed, far beyond what I deserve.  

That doesn't change what goes on, on the inside.  There really is no rhyme or reason, no tangible triggers to depression and suicidal thoughts, at least in my experience.   

My friend who shared they were hurting asked me to promise that before I doing anything permanently fatal that I reach out them and talk.  I promised I would.  It's comforting to know others also grapple or battle with similar demons, and they care enough to say, "hey let me know before you do anything..." 

I don't have any answers or solutions to the problem of suicide.  Yet, for those who like me who walk a fine line between this life and the next, I really just wanted to encourage you, you really aren't alone in the struggle.  There are more people who understand your struggle than perhaps you know.  You aren't alone. 

 https://youtu.be/D9F244ztjxA (this is a song I resonate with when life seems bleaker than I'd like)  

Why are we so different than our families?

 

John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins wrote a popular song about (what is perhaps the greatest church cliché ever), a wild preacher’s son. After Aretha Franklin originally turned it down, Dusty Springfield was the first artist to record it. Growing up as a preacher’s daughter, Franklin thought the song was disrespectful. After “Son of a Preacher Man” became a huge hit Franklin released her own version. The rest is, as they say, history.

Politics aside, a question we rarely ask is why do children often grow up to be completely different than their parents? Instead we are more interested in a corollary question: Why do people growing up in the same home with the same parents, in the same neighborhood, attending the same primary schools, receiving the same ethical instructions and values, turn out to be very different adults?

How can the same household simultaneously produce an atheist, an agnostic and a believer? What causes family members living under the same roof their entire childhood to grow up to be police officers, others pastors, while some end up as prison inmates? Why do some children grow up to be pacifists while their siblings retire from the armed forces? How can the same family produce a scholar and then a salesman, with an artistic child seated at the table with their analytic sibling?

Why, for example, did my wife and I get married as teenagers, but my only sibling, my older brother, wait until he was 33 to get married? How is it, of our four sons, one was completely disinterested in college, two started but left, and only one son graduated?

Can you think of anything more puzzling in this life than the question of sibling diversity? This question is probably as old as Cain and Abel. It seems like a combination of nature and nurture must play a role in developing our individualism. After all, it is within our human nature to seek out our independence and a desire to create our own unique identity. It also seems like the harder children are forced into a certain mold, the more they rebel against their parents.

What shapes our disposition and character more than our upbringing? Yet, children with the same upbringing are so different, what accounts for these changes?

Hopefully with a few years under their belt, parents adapt their parenting styles and gain better parenting skills. So yes, we parent our children differently over our years of parenting. Also as the years pass, different siblings in any given family are also exposed to a variety of cultural influences, a multitude of opportunities, and unexpected choices.

Then again, there is a lot of unanticipated envy and resentment when our children perceive favoritism among their siblings. Children can rebel out of spite, feeling their siblings were pampered while they themselves were overly punished. Other children happen to fall in with the wrong crowd.

Some are rescued by a godsend of a spouse.

Other than our parents, our friend circles are probably the strongest influence on our personal development. Consider Paul’s powerful warning in I Corinthians 15:33, “Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good character/morals.” Yes birds of a feather do flock together.

The reality is, there are no carbon copies when it comes to our children — the same home that raised an addict can turn out doctors or school teachers. Also, there is no such thing as a foolproof formula for child rearing. We need to tread cautiously when we try to encourage other frustrated parents with the old “Train up a child in the way they should go...” phrase. Proverbs 22:6 isn’t a guarantee that if we parent properly our children will make all the best choices in life. Proverbs 22:6 is a principle for parenting, not a promise of perfection.

Life is unpredictable. Perhaps there is no satisfactory answer as to why one child grows up to be cowardly while the other is courageous or why one child is an athlete and the other is a bookworm. But I’m not sure the deepest mystery of the universe is “why” do our children grow up to be so different, compared to a much greater mystery to me. Namely, why does God give us free will in the first place?

Originally published here: https://www.timesnews.net/living/features/craig-cottongim-why-are-siblings-so-different/article_a2cc657e-770f-11ed-b4d9-43ba86d2d2f5.html?fbclid=IwAR3tQ1xdUwadnFoTiax828i6fsbIHnPEjhQ-oMgIc0kuZUvrHyh0SJhHah8