February 28, 2018
A hundred years from now, when my novel is studied in every college English course, will I know that is happening? Will I look down from That Place, and see how students react to my heart poured out? Will I have the privilege to know how my writing, my legacy, reshapes them? Their thinking? Or will I have just ceased?
That is the main reason why I don’t off myself. Because I’m not sure what happens to people that off themselves. I know God wants us to hold the line, wait it out until our appointed time.
I don’t think suicides go to hell. No, that would be just too cruel. Suicides only suicide because the pain is unbearable. Why would God punish a person for not being able to bear the unbearable pain? He wouldn’t.
But on the other hand, I’m not sure suicides go to That Place. Wherever That Place is. The Place where you are with God. Heaven? I don’t know. No one really knows. There are some that die and come back, but the stories are inconsistent.
None of us knows what awaits after death, truly. None of us knows. We can only hope. Seek God. Seek his face. Seek his love. Seek his protection. Seek his wisdom. Seek his will. Then the suicide thoughts abate. For a time.
There is no magic. No magic for anything that ails us. All is addressed through hard work and plain faith. And neither is simple. Neither comes naturally to our naturally wicked selfish selves.
Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It’s there, even when we can’t see it or feel it, if we want it to be there. You realize, I think, that it is more valuable, more mysterious, altogether more immense than anything you can learn or decide upon. It will keep you free — not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects around you. -Flannery O’Connor