Okay, I just got VIP tickets for the U2 360 show in Atlanta this fall, and I am doing cartwheels in my living room.  I’m so excited I can’t stand it!!!!! Check it out.

Recently, one of my favorite people in the world sent me an email.  She described an amazing compliment she had received from a teenager she has loved and in whom she has invested her life.  Here is part of her email:

A few days ago, my friend was going through my infinite strands of cheap jewelry.  She blessed me with a wonderful compliment (coming from a teenager).  She said, “You are the coolest person I know”. 

Then she went on to blow me away with her words, saying:

Of course I was pumped all day.  I didn’t delve too deep into what all she meant.  It could have just been my junk jewelry collection.  But it got me thinking.  Who is the coolest person I know?  I have a number of really unique women friends.  I had to think for a while but the verdict was “unanimous”.  YOU are the coolest person I know!  Absolutely, without a doubt.  You show your humanness without restraint.  You have a deep spiritual magnetism that draws people to Jesus.  You delightfully show God’s joy, fun and sense of humor.  I love that the world doesn’t scare you to death.  You don’t run away from it.  Plus, you dress cute ;>) 

Okay, needless to say I was floored, flabergasted, and waaay flattered.  So, why am I telling you about it?  Just because I want anyone glancing at my blog to know how great I think I am?  Not entirely.  I share it partly because it was such an encouragment to me.  This friend knows that I am going through some difficult things that have continued for what seems like an eternity.  And she spoke words of life to my soul.  She loved me well in doing so.  Proverbs 18:21 says, “The tongue has the power of life and death.”  She used that power well.  We never know how much a small word of encouragement, praise, or love can mean to those around us.

The other reason is the I want to hear from you.  Who is the “coolest person you know?”  What is it that makes them unique and wonderful?

The friend who wrote me (Janet!) is whimsical, uninhibited, artistic, funny, caring, sensitive, young-at-heart.  She dances at concerts.  She dresses in an eclectic, one-of-a-kind style.  She is unafraid to be herself and speaks her mind even when she knows others will not agree.  She has raised two boys and is an extremely fun grandmother.  She has written and published a book.  She loves life and lives it to the fullest.  I love her with all my heart, and I think I have to agree with her young teenage friend that she is the coolest person I know.

Hmmmm.  Of course, I do know many other very extremely cool people.  Maybe I’ll have to start a regular blog post about them. . .  But, oh yeah, tell me about your cool people.

I am a part-time mental health professional, that is when I’m not talking “pokemon” with my 8 year old, going to pet stores with my 6 year old, reading about princesses with my 4 year old, or going to eat yummy Thai food with my hubby.  Last week, as part of a new initiative to work harder and do a better job of saving the lives of those who are suicidally depressed, our entire staff participated in a day-long seminar about the prevention of suicide.  The information is so crucial I want to pass it along.

Although the topic is not a fun one to talk about, knowing the signs of a person who is at high risk to attempt to take his or her own life, can go a long way in preventing that tragedy.  Over the past year, in the small community in which I live, one teenage girl shot and killed herself, my neighbor’s son hung himself, and another neighbor down the street unsuccessfully attempted to kill himself by gunwound.  Undoubtedly and tragically, the same is true nearly everywhere.

The following facts are reported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  More than 32,000 suicides occurred in the United States in 2005.  This equals 89 suicides per day; one suicide every 16 minutes, or 11.01 suicides per 100,000 population.  Worldwide the facts are even more startling.  Every year 1 million people worldwide purposefully take their own lives.  To bring this closer to home, within the county in which I live, 35 people take their lives each year.  That is one person in my county every 10 days. 

The Surgeon General has called on all health workers to make a concerted effort to lower these numbers.  One of the things you can do, even if you are not in the health field, is the increase your own understanding of the signs and risk factors of a person who is considering suicide.  You will be better equipped to notice these signs and take them seriously when you see them in a neighbor, friend, co-worker, or family member.  Of course, if you do find yourself as part of a support system for someone who is suicidal, be sure that person is under the care of a qualified psychiatrist or other mental health professional.

Here are the strong predictors of suicide or risk factors, as agreed upon by many experts in the field:  psychiatric disorders, past history of attempted suicide, genetic predisposition, impulsivity, intense hopelessness, loss of pleasure, loss of ability to react to positive events, mood cycling (this cycling is from dark to darker to darkest and back again), depressive turmoil (likened to a motor running inside turning over the thoughts of death constantly), unusual or pyschotic thinking (believing things that are not true, such as “this will never change.”), immediate triggers, such as anything causing public humiliation, increased alcohol or drug use, and making a plan (including an impulsive purchase of a firearm or other means of killing oneself or giving away prized possessions.)

Clearly, depression is the mother of suicide, whether that depression takes the form of a depressive disorder, bi-polar disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, or any other psychiatric illness.

Horrifically, 75% of patients deny any suicidality immediately before they take their own life.  This means that just because a person tells you they will not take their life does not mean they are safe.  Therefore, it is not good enough for a person to deny suicidality. 

Here are a few more simple things you can understand if you are faced with helping a person through the risk of self-harm. (And please remember, it is absolutely imperative that the person receive professional mental health treatment. Over 90% of people with complete suicides have a diagnosable, treatable psychiatric illness.) With that said, the goal of the professional and the person’s support system should be to increase supports and lower risk factors. In other words, there are very measurable things that can be done to lessen the risk for a completed suicide, such as, among others, making sure lethal means are inaccessible, increasing emotional support and the individual’s sense of being needed within a community, treatment for alcoholism or drug use, and effective and correct dosages of medications.

God forbid that anyone would be reading this while contemplating taking his or her precious life.  But if you are, I urge you to call 1-800-SUICIDE.  This is a crisis hotline that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and you will be connected to a hotline nearest you.  There is hope.  There is help, no matter how black it may seem at this time.  I am a living testament.  I was at a hopeless place in my life 18 years ago, where I truly thought nothing good would ever come to me again.  I truly wanted to die, to be erased from the earth.  Not only have I found help and hope, but I also lead a full, rich, challenging life.  God truly deliverd my soul from death.  There is a thief, and his name is Satan.  He loves nothing more than to steal, kill, and destroy.  I pray for you now that God’s mighty hand will deliver you as he has me.

And if you are suffering from the loss of someone you love to suicide, my heart goes out deeply to you.  I am so very sorry for your loss.  You are not alone in your grief, and although time may not heal your wound, it will certainly make it more bearable.  You may find this website called Survivors of Suicide to have some helpful resources or stories.

Finally, if you want to learn more or find out a way you can be active in raising awareness and saving lives, check out the website of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(The picturer is entitled Serengeti by Lorne Resnick, and can be found at Allposters.)

God is good all the time.

I love that saying, and it is true.  It’s easy to say he is good when things are going well, or when he answers a prayer, or when a medical test turns out the way we had hoped, or when life is chipper.  It’s not so easy to see his goodness during a tough, disappointing, lonely time, or in the midst of a war, or when our bank account is empty, or we have lost a loved one or a cherished dream.  But whether or not we see his goodness, whether or not we believe it, it is true, all the time.

The fruit of the Spirit is goodness.

There’s a psalm in the Message that says “You are good and the source of all goodness.  Train me in your goodness.”  (Fill me with your goodness.)

You know, I have an interesting relationship with “goodness.”  I grew up in a legalistic environment, an independent Baptist church, where the teaching was largely an emphasis on “being good and doing right.”  It was so much so, that I began to think I was better than others, that I was somehow on the fast road to pleasing God because I attended church, obeyed my parents (at least outwardly), and read my Bible.  I have a rather compliant personality, and I love to please, so I could perform well, or at least look like I was doing what was expected of me in this culture.  I was wrongly equating goodness with doing the right thing or a simplistic morality.

Later, I began to question this teaching, and I heard some new thoughts (to me) on total depravity.   As I began to realize the depths of my sin, I had  hard time believing I was good at all.  It was a scary place to be, for someone with an extra sensitive conscience.  Because I had not yet learned to rest in what God had already done for me in Christ, I struggled and strived to do more for him.  There was always a nagging sense of guilt and doubt that I had done enough.  There was often a fear that God was frowning on me when I was doing anything that wasn’t “spiritual.”

The problem with all this “doing good” was that it was not done from a deep sense of trust in God’s finished work for me.  Not out of gratitude and assurance of my own forgiveness.  It was often done from a sense of fear, not sure I was pleasing God enough. 

There came a turning point for me, a huge “Aha” moment, when I realized more fully what the gospel really means.  That God gave me the goodness of Christ when he took all of my imperfections, failures, outright rebellion and hatred on himself.  The truth finally began to grip me that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness (goodness) of Christ.  2 Cor. 5:21

The fruit of the Holy Spirit in his redeemed ones is goodness.  The word in Greek is agathosune, which signifies goodness of heart, a desire after goodness, a kind activity on the part of others.  This throws a wrench in the self-righteous part of us that wants to be good so that we can boast we are better than others or so that we can feel happy with ourselves.  The goodness of God is for the benefit of others, and it is always kind.

Life is hard.  There are spots in all our lives where we will walk through struggles, questions, groanings, spells of lonliness.  God is good.  All the time.  And he has this way about him of using these dark times for our good and his lifting up.  Let us groan and yearn with the Spirit within us for the goodness of God, his kind intentions, to be grown in us and shown to the world around us.  What a need there is for this sweet aroma of Christ.

Again, I’ve been reading Bread and Wine Readings for Lent and Easter, and yesterday I came across a disturbing, yet important bit of work called “The Cross and the Cellar” by Morton T. Kelsey.  Here is a portion:

Each of us has underneath our ordinary personality, which we show to the public, a cellar in which we hide the refuse and rubbish, which we would rather not see ourselves or let others see.  And below that is a deeper hold in which there are dragons and demons, a truly hellish place, full of violence and hatred and viciousness. . . In the cross, this level of our being has thrust itself up out of its deepest underground cellar so that we humans may see what is in all of us and take heed. . . This destructiveness within us can seldom be transformed until we squarely face it in ourselves.  This confrontation often leads us into the pit.

The quote makes me think of the scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowhip of the  Ring, in which Gandalf  battles the great underworld demon Balrog for his friends, shouting with authority, “You shall not pass.”  And then he is swept unknowingly into a battle for his life in the underground world of darkness, evil, and fiery demons.  Watch the clip:

The cool thing is knowing that this is what Jesus has done for us.  Though we will continue to fight many battles with demons within and without ourselves in this world, the battle of deepest and fiercest darkness has been fought.  And won.  If it had been up to us, if I were left to face these demons within my heart alone, all would have been despair.  But we have a Savior.  A real one.  And I am so very glad.

These guys are having fun in New York this week.  Right now, they’re performing live on Good Morning America at Fordham University.  But they’ve been hanging with Dave all week.  This you tube clip is hilarious.

I’ve been pondering a few readings from Bread and Wine - Readings for Lent and Easter, and I came across this portion of St. Augustine’s Confessions:

The Maker of man was made man, that the Ruler of the stars might suck at the breast; that the Bread might be hungered; the Fountain, thirst; the Light, sleep; the Way, be wearied by the journey; the Truth, be accused by false witnesses; the Judges of the living and the dead, be judged by a mortal judge; the Chastener, be chastised with whips; the Vine, be crowned with thorns; the Foundation, be hung upon the tree; Strength, be made weak; Health, be wounded; life, die.  To suffer these and suchlike things, undeserved things, that he might free the undeserving, for neither did He deserve any evil, who for our sakes endured so many evils, nor were we deserving of anything good, we who through Him received such good.

This is more of what I love to call the “upside down gospel.”  Life, even the spiritual life, is not as it often seems.  It is through paradox that we find truth.  We fail, and we find that success is a gift for losers who know they need it.  We hate, and forgiveness melts our hearts into love.  We try to be strong until we are so weak that we realize it is his strength we need and that it is only found when ours is gone.   We’re astonished by our wickedness, and even more stunned by the One who knew all along and gave us his goodness. 

Good stuff, this upside down gospel.  It means it is not up to me.  It has already been done.  And to quote my man, Bono, on his new album (Did you think I could pass up an opportunity to do so?),  “It’s not if I believe in love, but if Love believes in me.”  Take some time to think of these things as the season of Jesus’ suffering and death approaches.

(Above picture compliments of St. David’s Church, Houston.)

Last weekend, my hubby and I kindly declined an offer to go with grandparents to the ”Greatest Show on Earth.”  We told his parents our life is a three-ring circus all the time, so we didn’t need to pay to see one.  Instead we sent the kids with them to the circus, and we had a nice Mexican dinner and went to see Slumdog Millionaire.

The smashing hit movie, with its 8 Oscars, is an amazing story.  If you haven’t seen it, go.  A moving, inspiring story of love and loyalty, betrayal and dashed hopes, redemption and life reborn.  It is life at its worst.  And best.  The link below shows the dance scene at the end of the movie, English subtitles included.  Jai Ho!

It’s Victory!

Aaah.  Bliss.  It is here.  And it was worth the wait.  Full of good stuff.  Spent my afternoon curled up in bed with both my girls beside me, watching the cool graphics on my computer while I listened to U2’s new album, while reading and digesting the words.  It’s going to be fun to get familiar.  And, their tour dates will be announced next Monday, March 9th. . .  Gonna be a great year!

Here’s a review worth reading at Blog.Listen, and here Bob Flayhart is taking a journey with the songs and their meaning on his blog.

Oh, and can I just say that the deluxe version, with digital video is so worth it.  Get it!  iTunes.