Monday nights were my favorite in my late twenties and early thirties. I served in Oasis, a ministry for children whose parents were divorced or experiencing marital strife. We weren’t a babysitting service; we were helping the kids face that challenge with faith.

I’ll never forget one little five-year-old boy. During the free time before formal instruction began, he moved toys from one place to another. As he did, he banged the toy on the floor and yelled, “I’m moving out!” I knew immediately he was imitating his dad. It broke my heart. I knew he was angry at his dad, so I let him hit me. After all, he was five, so he wouldn’t hurt me. That kid became my best friend that session.

He wasn’t in the next session, but he showed up decked out in his baseball uniform. He came to show me he was playing baseball and that he still had the cross we made in class.

I loved Oasis. I loved teaching the kids and playing with them. We were having an impact. Our team was tight-knit. We planned lessons together, studied the Bible together, and did life together.

Suicide

The group leader was an only child. When his mother died, he was alone and clearly depressed. He had not properly mourned the loss. We knew he needed help. We encouraged him to call a counseling service. He refused, so I made the call for him.

He recognized that he needed help and didn’t want to be alone. I let him stay in a spare room at my house. He needed help by going to a day program. It would require time off work, so I convinced him to request it to attend a day program, and I had to fight him to make that happen. I went with him to ensure he actually asked.

Soon after, he wrecked his car and was hospitalized. His friends and I convinced him to be voluntarily admitted to the psych ward. To be released, he needed a plan. He agreed to a plan to come home to my house and attend the day program when he was discharged.

He never made it to the day program.

After he spent his first night at my house following discharge, I went to work in the morning. A friend checked in on him later and found him unconscious. I got the call at work and rushed home.

My friend had taken all of his prescription medication. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Processing the Loss

Suicide has to be the most difficult loss to process and understand. When someone ends their own life, you wonder why. You wonder what I could have done to save them. Did I do enough? All those thoughts and questions ran through my mind as I tried to make sense of them, while feeling the loss deeply.

He was not only my best friend but also a mentor and someone I admired.

I wrote many poems to process this time. I wrote ones on the battle I fought to save his life and how I felt after the suicide. All eight poems are on AllPoetry.com on this list https://allpoetry.com/lists/22732-For-Johnny-B

The one that helped me most was the one I titled

The Suicide of a Friend

Three long weeks we fought
for your life.
Three long weeks we sought
to be your savior.

But you were beyond
our power.
You were too far gone
to be saved.

The person you once were
Was already gone.
The person we wanted to cure
Had already died.

We are all deeply hurt
By what was done.
Our souls are in a desert
Asking “why this?”

Still we know in our hearts
This was not you,
Who chose this life to depart
It was someone else.

The man we loved so deep
Had left us
Long before eternal sleep
Laid you to rest.

We will remember the man
Who helped so many.
We will remember the man
Who loved so freely.

We will remember the man
Who bound us together.
We will remember the man
Who unites us now.

We will not say
“Good-bye, dear friend”
But rather “until we meet again,
One sweet day.”

Big Mistake

After my friend died, we had a new session of Oasis. I made the mistake of taking on my friend’s responsibility as a leader. Wanting the ministry to continue, I recruited a single mom I knew, along with her teenage children, to help, since some of our team had wisely left. I remained determined to help the kids. My motive was good, but it was a mistake. I drained myself at a time that I needed to grieve.

Years before this, I was in a counselor’s office and told him how I supported my relatives as a teen when my aunt died. He asked a profound question that brought me to tears. “Who was there for Bob?” That question came back to me. I was again not allowing anyone to be there for me when I needed to heal.

Healing

During that time, I went on a personal retreat. I rented a room in a convent and spent a weekend alone with God, processing the grief through His Word, prayer, and Christian books. While praying, I would walk around a lake. I found it easier to pray when I walked. I still do. Perhaps it is because, when I walk, I’m forced to spend more time in prayer, even when I can’t think of anything to say.

One of the books I read was Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning. Manning writes about identity rooted in God’s unconditional love. Manning contrasts the “impostor” self we build out of fear and performance with the true self God already accepts, drawing on his own struggles with addiction and shame.

This resonated with me because my false self is also built on performance. I want to look good. I play to an imaginary audience rather than the audience of one (God).

The true self is the one already loved and accepted by God (“Abba,” meaning intimate Father).

I was wondering whether I did enough? I was struggling with failure. My friend died. I tried to save him but failed. Manning helped me to see that I was evaluating my performance. My performance didn’t matter. What mattered was that I am a beloved child of God and so was my friend.

Abba’s Child

I am Abba’s Child.
He looked at me and smiled,
“This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased.”
He blanketed me in his arms and squeezed.

I felt the warmth of his embrace,
As he allowed me to see His face.
“Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God” – never to be apart.

A beloved child is my identity,
Now and through eternity.
The impostor self no longer defines
The child of God that I am by design.

God’s love is not earned.
I need not be concerned
With my failure or success.
By Him and His grace, I am blessed.

Unfair, Silent, Hidden

I’d already wrestled with Yancey’s questions about God after reading “Disappointment With God” years ago. Yancey asked whether God was unfair, silent, hidden. With my friend’s death, I had to wrestle with them all over again, and the silence hit differently.

Unfair

Was it unfair that my friend died after all I did to save him?

I realized that suicide is like cancer. My friend had a disease called depression. This disease was as deadly as cancer. Can cancer be cured? In some cases, yes. In others, no. My friend was already too far gone. I felt I had done what I could.

When facing death, even death by suicide, I remind myself of the truth about fairness.

If we were all to perish because of our sin, that would be fair and just. We live in a broken world because of our sin and rebellion against God. My friend suffered from depression after the death of his mother. Depression and death exist because our world is broken.

I had to consider what suicide meant for eternity. If my friend ended his life, did he not trust God? Was he saved?

Romans 8:35–39 helped me understand:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Even the death of my friend could not separate him from that love. I had to believe it. I looked back at my friend’s life of service and his devotion. He encouraged my faith, so I knew he had faith.

Silent

I wondered if I missed something. Could I have saved him? Could God have? I wanted to understand why my friend had to die. I wanted answers from God.

God didn’t speak to me directly. I never heard an audible voice or even thoughts in my head. He didn’t give me all the answers I sought. He gave me comfort and a sense that my friend was with God in eternity, and that I had done enough even though I had failed to save him.

Could God have saved my friend? Yes. He chose not to save him. I never found the answer why. God was silent.

Hidden

Did I visibly see God at work during this time? No. Could he have shown up and stopped my friend from taking the pills, sent an angel to stop him like he stopped Abraham from slaying Isaac? Yes, but he chose not to. The better question would be: Would I have grown in my faith in God and love for him had he? I believe the answer is no.

Pain is a great teacher, even though we would prefer not to experience it. I was hurting, but God was teaching me and growing my faith as I hurt. The leader of the ministry said something that really helped. She said, “You loved him well.” That statement didn’t take away the hurt, but I found it very comforting.

God did comfort me through this in unexpected ways, using the very hurt and emptiness I felt.

Finding Comfort

When the next ministry session started, I couldn’t go back to the kindergarten room. I had stretched too far trying to carry my friend’s responsibilities while neglecting my own healing. I moved to serving in infants and toddlers instead. Holding babies and playing with toddlers helped restore the emptiness I felt.

I found joy again. My heart was healing. It took over a year to heal, but heal I did.

The twentieth anniversary of my friend’s death occurred recently. I felt the sadness all over again. Healing doesn’t take away the hurt even twenty years later. Healing means I’ve been able to grow and handle the hurt.

I live as a beloved child of God even when he’s silent, hidden, or seemingly unfair.

My first experience of death was when my cousin (he was 18) was killed in a car crash. I was still in elementary school at the time. He was the fun cousin, though he was quite a bit older. He’d come over, and we’d all camp out on the floor with blankets and watch the late TV together. He was a teenager, but he’d play with us all the same.

When we received the phone call, my mom didn’t want to tell my younger siblings, thinking they wouldn’t understand. I didn’t think this was right, so I told them.

I didn’t go to the funeral. We drove from Illinois to Cleveland and stayed at my Aunt’s house. The funeral was in the morning, and I didn’t really want to get up early only to see a dead body. My mother let me stay all by myself at my Aunt’s.

I saw pictures afterward, and one of my cousins told me what happened. I was glad I didn’t go, but I felt sad. My cousin, my playmate, was gone. The young man I looked up to was no longer in my life. I didn’t know it, but eighteen would become a significant age in our family, associated with both death and the frightening possibility of losing a child.

Eighteen Months

In my early twenties, I flew to California to celebrate a religious holiday. My cousin had recently had a baby. Since the holiday celebration was near my cousin’s home, I took the opportunity to visit. I love babies. I enjoyed holding her Son, Shawn, and snuggling.

When that baby boy was eighteen months old, something tragic happened. Shawn’s babysitter shook him in a moment of rage, which you should never do with a baby. He died.

I was heartbroken. I often express my feelings by writing poetry. It helps me to process them. When Shawn died, I wrote a poem to him, which was later used in the trial against his sitter to show how his death had affected the family.

To Shawn

When a child dies,
It seems the world cries.
Sweet innocence this day
Has been taken away.

All souls are filled with sorrow,
Making it hard to go on to tomorrow.
Everyone feels such sadness,
Wondering why this horrible madness.

What makes this day even worse
Is that this painful curse
By such violence came to be.
It’s hard to grasp such absurdity.

When a little baby dies,
It seems the world cries.
Sweet innocence this day
Has been taken away.

When my Aunt read my poem at the trial, I felt that I was sharing my grief with the world. I hoped it would help my cousin find some sense of justice, and I wanted her to know that I understood her pain and grieved with her.

My Nephew

Shawn’s death was devastating, and the age of eighteen months would take on another significance for our family. When my oldest nephew reached that same age, we had a terrifying experience of our own. He stopped breathing and had to be intubated, then airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in Chicago. My sister told me the hospital staff had trouble intubating my nephew. It was the helicopter nurse who got the right tube down his throat.

At the hospital, my nephew was put into an induced coma. He had an infection that was blocking his throat. We were told this was not something to be concerned about, but we were very concerned.

He survived, but we had nearly lost him.

I loved my nephew dearly. This was the first child born to any of my siblings. I would play on the floor with him and hold him in my arms. When I visited, he would always want to be with me. Again, I processed my feelings in a poem.

Almost

Oh precious child not even two,
How it hurt to almost lose you.
Seeing you lying on that bed,
Alive but appearing nearly dead,
Was more than we could endure,
We feared we might lose you for sure.

By your side constantly we stayed,
As we held your little hand and prayed.
“Oh Lord of heaven and earth,
From the day of this child’s birth,
To us, such happiness did his life convey!
Please, don’t take our little one away!”

We are so thankful you are still around.
Happiness in our lives once again abounds.
We rejoice that you are still here,
And that we can again hold you near.
We are thankful that you could stay,
And that the Lord didn’t take you away.

Grappling with Reasons for Suffering

When you love children as deeply as I do, losing one—or even coming close to losing one—is heartbreaking, especially when that child is part of your family.

Shawn died, while my nephew survived. Both experiences affected me deeply, and together they raised difficult questions about suffering. Why do such terrible things happen to innocent children? Why does one child die while another survives? And what does it mean for our faith when we cannot understand why these things happen?

Over time, these experiences began to shape my understanding of suffering. I came to believe that when a baby suffers, it isn’t the fault of the baby or the parents. Suffering isn’t necessarily a punishment from God.

I once spoke at my church about how bad things don’t happen because of sin, but because our world is broken. Jesus healed a man born blind and told his disciples the blindness wasn’t caused by anyone’s sin — his parents’ or his own (John 9:1-7). He also mentioned a tower that had fallen and said that those who died weren’t worse sinners than anyone else (Luke 13:2-5).

These passages helped me understand that suffering isn’t necessarily a punishment for sin. But they didn’t answer all my questions about why God allows suffering in the first place, especially involving an innocent child.

Disappointment With God

To explore those questions further, I read a book titled Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey. It dealt with 3 questions:

1. Is God unfair?
2. Is God silent?
3. Is God hidden?

Unfair?

When we think something is unfair, it is because it doesn’t meet our expectations. If we never expected something, we would never be disappointed. Yancy concludes that life is unfair in a fallen world; God remains and stands with us in our pain. God is just because the punishment for our sins was paid by God when Jesus died. He stands with us in our pain, and he understands it because he endured the most excruciating pain imaginable. God is not the reason we have pain. We are. We rebelled against him, against the way of unselfish love, so we created a world of pain and suffering. But God didn’t abandon us to that world we created. He provided the way out through faith in the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus.

Silent?

Second, he examines God’s silence, suggesting that His quietness is an invitation to move beyond the need for constant proof and to develop a mature, trusting faith. God spoke through the prophets, and yet Israel didn’t listen to or obey his word. God desires faith and trust. Sometimes he builds it in his silence.

Hidden?

Finally, Yancey tackles why God is hidden, explaining that God chooses to veil His physical presence to allow for genuine, freely chosen love rather than forced compliance. Israel saw and experienced God in incredible ways, yet they rebelled against him. God doesn’t want obedience out of trembling fear. God desires obedience out of love. He wants us to learn to love him and others. But He doesn’t just command it; He enables us to love by His Spirit in us.

Death and Disappointment

Yancey’s questions gave me a framework for reflecting on my own experiences. They helped me think about the questions that had troubled me, even though they didn’t provide a complete explanation for everything that had happened. When I looked back on the deaths of my cousin and Shawn, and on my nephew’s survival, I found myself returning to those same three questions.

Was God Unfair?

When someone we love dies, it’s natural to feel that something is terribly unfair, especially when it’s a child who hasn’t experienced a full life. I loved my cousin and Shawn, and it was difficult to accept that their lives had ended so young.

Was God Silent?

God didn’t give me an explanation. He didn’t tell me why my cousin died, why a baby was murdered, or why my nephew lived. I still don’t understand why he saves some and not others. I don’t understand why he heals some and not others.

Was God Hidden?

God didn’t send an angel to explain why these things happened or reveal himself to me in some unmistakable way. Instead, He comforted me through poems, through family, and through a church community.

I believe God understands death and loss because Jesus died. God gave his only Son for us. God understands our pain because he experienced it. He doesn’t put us through anything he himself wasn’t willing to go through.

I never found a complete, satisfying explanation, but I found comfort from a God who understands my pain and my questions.