In Memory of Jarrid Wilson and all our hopes and dreams

I’ve spent the morning tidying my house, crying my eyes out and singing the Common Doxology at the top of my lungs. Jarrid Wilson died by suicide. Another husband, parent, friend, pastor and author lost to us all. I had never met Jarrid but I followed him on Twitter and was encouraged and enriched by his life and his message. I had long wanted to have him as a guest on my show and share his story with others. But now I can’t. And I feel disappointed. And I feel ashamed, since I’m hardly the one who has experienced the loss here.

The last time this happened we all poured out our sympathy and grief and talked about the importance of mental health awareness and of reaching out to friends. All of that conversation feels a little hollow in the case of Jarrid, who was one of the Evangelical world’s most outspoken advocates for mental health awareness and who was a support to countless people battling suicidal thoughts. He had tweeted messages of support and the importance of connection the very same day that he…

And so we are shocked. We cannot believe it. It is unreal.

But it is very real. Perhaps we’re already starting to get numbed to it? Perhaps the rising tide of pastoral suicide is nibbling at the edges of our hope.

No! We say, we must have hope! Why didn’t Jarrid reach out? Surely he knew the warning signs. And there’s anger and confusion. But Jarrid did know the warning signs and he did reach out to his friend Adam Weber, who prayed for him the same evening that he…

And so we are horrified and confused and we wonder how Adam can possibly move on without being crushed by guilt and despair? In his own words,

I wish I would have pressed you harder & asked more questions. You knew all the right things to do around depression, yet I wish I would have told you you couldn’t handle it. More than anything, I wish I would have called you more.

And so we sit in silence, our throats choked by grief and our minds not able to find any words that seem to fit. And we think of Juli and the children. And we donate to the GoFundMe. And we read Adam’s other words:

It’s not your fault. My first funeral (I was a 24 yr old pastor) was a young dad who took his life hours after I met with him. I rethought every single word. I had nightmares for months. I wanted to quit being a pastor. If someone you love has taken their life, it’s not on you.

And that’s true. And so maybe we talk about pastoral expectations. And the mega-church system. And how it dehumanizes the people it puts on stage. Pastor Andrew Stoecklein died by suicide soon after returning from sabbatical, didn’t he? Jarrid Wilson hadn’t been at Harvest for long, had Laurie put too much pressure on him? Adam Weber said he conducted a funeral for a father when he was only 24 years old. We might read the words of David Fitch, who wrote this morning,

I believe we need to look at how the American pastorate isolates an individual unto him/herself, places incredible expectations on him/her and creates a ‘front’ which is almost impossible to escape — even if you talk about it regularly. If your belief system depends on you personally believing and experiencing a set of beliefs about God, salvation, etc., (as opposed to being part of a mutual network of a sustained way of life) you’re inevitably going to have deep doubts, deep identity struggles, and feel like the rug is pulled out from beneath you into a sink hole of deep despair, all in front of the gaze of a group of people. If your whole front depends upon keeping this belief system/experience in tact, your whole identity is threatened regularly by doubt/despair. You have no space to process. It’s a sink hole. I believe this way that the American mega church pastorate shapes one’s psycho-subjectivity (not just those who are successful in it — but all those who seek it as the measure of what it means to be a pastor) is dangerous to the mental health of the average human.

Which I think is true. But we already knew this, didn’t we? If “trusted leaders” like Hybels and MacDonald can’t exist in that framework without falling to depravity…

And we start to consider the ancient wisdom of tearing our clothes and putting ashes upon our heads because it’s all just too much.

And then maybe in our cynicism, we think about the fact that the suicide rate is vastly higher among men than among women, and maybe if we wanted to balance out the suicide rate we should just let women preach and teach in churches after all…

But then maybe we remember the conversation we had with our girlfriend when we were both 16 and she had been cutting herself and said the only reason she hadn’t killed herself yet was because she didn’t want to go to hell and you’d never even heard that theology before so you told her that Jesus didn’t care about how someone died, he just loved them, and she freaked out and told you not to say that since fear of hell was the only thing keeping her alive.

And so we sit in silence.
Accompanied by shock and grief and horror and rage and confusion and cynicism and OH GOD NO NO NO.

And so we cry.
And so we breathe.
And so we hold space for those who have lost their other halves.
For those who have lost their fathers and their mothers.
For those who have lost their future and their hope.

And we sit in silence and we hold that sacred space for ourselves.
For the nights when we too have nursed dark thoughts and considered…

And in that sacred, holy space, we might find Jesus, sitting beside us.
Accompanying us.
Holding space with us.
Holding silence.
Holding our hands in his hands.
The same hands that he allowed us to pierce so that we would know he would never lift a hand against us. The same hands that bring vision to blind eyes and lift naked women out of the dust and raise dead girls & dead friends to life.

And we remember resurrection. And we remember that morning comes after mourning.

And we remember that he holds within his own being the ongoing lives of those who are not with us here any more. That he holds Jarrid Wilson. And Andrew Stoecklein. And Matthew Warren. And Eugene Peterson. And Rachel Held Evans. And your great-grandmother. And at least one thief.

And we might hear him say, “I have placed before you life and death.”

And we might also hear him say, “Choose life.”

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.