• Follow Me on Pinterest

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Suicides in Military

I am so troubled when I read about people committing suicide. A recent article caught my attention, "Military suicides increasing. More soldiers committed suicide in 2012 than were killed in battle for entire year". How infinitely sad; how tragic; why did these people think that destroying themselves was their only option? Did anyone in their lives notice that they needed help? What does this say about our culture - the society we live in that a human being can walk among us so filled with despair and anxiety that no one notices? Perhaps they do notice but choose not to intervene or "interfere" with the one who is lost? It makes me want to cry, to sob out loud, to rend my clothing, and pour ashes on my head when I hear of these poor lost ones who choose to end it all.
Maybe we let them go because we have lost the capacity to care; we have lots of excuses to turn our eyes away from the despairing one -- "I'm too busy", "Let someone else deal with it", I have too much going on right now"....
This morning before the dawn arrived, I lay in bed thinking of these poor lost souls and wondering what God would want me to do, and then something that Mother Teresa of Calcutta said came to my mind, "Serve Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor". If only there were someone in each of their lives who told them how precious they are in God's eyes and that giving in to despair was something that they should not do and that God will give them the strength and the graces they need to carry on each day...perhaps then they would have been willing to pick up their cross and carry it.
"Just allow people to see Jesus in you
to see how you pray
to see how you lead a pure life
to see how you deal with your family
to see how much peace there is in your family
Then you can look straight into their eyes and say
"This is the way". You speak from life, you speak from experience."
Mother Teresa

2 comments:

  1. It is very isolating to be in the military. All of your family is far away. Your friends are living life and by the time you return the whole world has changed. Most don't even get letters from home because people don't write letters anymore. And what letters they do write are heavily editted to preserve their and our security. Our culture has far outpaced the soldier and they have been left behind.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cecilia Therese
    You are right! "Our culture has far outpaced the soldier and they have been left behind".....

    ReplyDelete