The sadness of death
By now we've lost count of the lockdowns we've got through in this pandemic. One thing is certain: everything that before could have been treated, or left in the past with a good chat, today is heading for a bad end if not caught in time.
There are those who are used to being alone, those who chose to be alone, those who were forced to be alone, those who isolated themselves to be left alone, those who found everything in their being alone.
Is a life of solitude possible? Of course it is: if there is the awareness of wanting to be left in peace, nothing and no one can affect that person's emotional state. This person's state of being is free, free even from keeping up conversations, going out and making new friends and so on. But a lockdown can still be a destructive sadness for this person, one that can lead to death.
Those who have always lived their freedom outside the walls of home, like career men or women, explorers of the Earth, artists, and as many as we want to name, there would be thousands, these, forced to shut themselves in during a lockdown, will be the first to feel a suicidal sadness.
Obviously an exception is made for those who chose a life of confinement, like those who decided to commit a crime that necessarily led them to jail. In that state there is no lockdown that exists. We hope never to know those lockdowns, because I suppose they are hard and only the tough ones of a tough life can endure. Others, instead, even grow so sad that they end it.
There are ways of living and there are constraints of life. Each of these ways makes us live our path. Everything already lived in our past has shaped our present, so a constraint at this moment can be lethal. I know what sadness means, I know what loneliness means, I know what despair from loneliness means, I know what thoughts of suicide mean. I assure you that it all happens in an instant, it's all an explosion; everything looks strong to the eye, but at the same time soft and easily pierced. It is that thin membrane between life and death.
You should be very glad that in my dark moment there was no lockdown, because I don't think I'd be here telling you this; but today I have the solution. Today I can say that even when I deliberately isolate myself, from my wife, children, life, work and so on, I find everything.
If before a lockdown would have led me to death, a second situation after that period of illness led me into a second period of distress. There was a first and a second time. There was a before and an after. There was one side and also the other side of that coin. In my first distress I was completely alone, without a lockdown but with half a victory, because, unbelieving, I fought to motivate myself and I didn't die, but I won a very expensive stay with a psychologist. Afterwards my life, crooked as it was, went on, but I came to know my real victory, the other side I knew about but would never, ever have considered. Many talk about it, and when I heard people talk about it my blood would boil, I'd get angry at that honey pouring out of the mouths of those presumptuous, know-it-all, gullible, love-struck eyelash-flutterers; and yet I lived this on my own skin to tell you today (but not honeyed, presumptuous or know-it-all, and without eyelashes fluttering with love) that knowing Christ personally is possible and can save you........ I don't know if it came across that I wanted to pause, waiting for your reaction, complete with a shake of the head, as you said "there you go, I knew it, we've got another saved one, ugh". Yet whether that's what you exclaimed or you were pleased, I'm here to tell you about my misadventure in life, because it's through this title, or the misadventure of my life, that you kept reading to reach my discovery.
But I'm not here to convert you to anything, because everything is will and the desire for victory in your own life. I can tell you about a before and an after, like a father with a son, where the father, first as a son, learns and then brings it into his son's life. The discovery is up to you, and if you don't know how, feel free to get in touch with me. But in that lockdown, where sadness comes and loneliness is unavoidable, I can tell you about three months faced with an energy like I had never felt before, and no loneliness could hold up, because I have found my Everything.
Don't die of sadness and don't let sadness kill you: receive love Now.
Inspired by the verse:
2 Corinthians 7:10
For the sadness that is used by God brings a change of heart that leads to salvation, and there is no regret in that! But worldly sadness causes death.