How to Die

How to Die - Cultivating Thoughts of Suicide
Many people struggle with how to die when dealing with the issue of suicide. Perhaps you came across this article for that very reason. We hope to offer you some insight into dealing with the pressures of life which could contribute to the feelings you are experiencing.

Let me also state that I wrote this article from my personal experience and it is a depiction of what I have felt and dealt with over the past year. Again, my hope is that we can offer you some direction in dealing with the feelings you may be having now.

The last year of my life has been one long roller coaster of turmoil with many emotional low points and very few high points. Because of this, I have discovered how easily it is to slide from emotional collapse to spiritual disintegration, and maybe even cultivate thoughts of actual death. Let me tell you my story and then maybe you’ll understand.

How to Die - Emotional, Spiritual, and Physical
There are a lot of things in life which cause us consider how to die. Perhaps you are experiencing an emotional meltdown -- the death of a loved one, break up of a relationship, loss of a job, or some other emotional tragedy.

For me, these feelings of how to die came when three very difficult events occurred in my life within months of each other: The first was my son being involved in an accident that claimed the lives of two other people; the second was the death of a twenty-three-year-old girl who was like a daughter to me; and the third was the death of my mother. Add into the mix the death of a very close friend and you can see why I felt like I was in an emotional downfall.

These events led to questioning the reason for my own existence as well as the reality of God. Can you identify with these feelings?

When the tough events of this life start to pile up at your doorstep, you may start to question everything: your beliefs, your faith, even your reason for being. My emotional turmoil led me down a very dangerous road where I started to question the character of a loving God, or even the existence of God at all.

I asked myself all of the standard Why? questions -- “Why me?” “Why would God allow all this suffering in my life?” and so on. This led to being mad at God and turning my back on Him for awhile. When we die emotionally, it leads to a gradual extinction of our spirits, which then drives our questioning to why we even need to be here. In the end, this emptiness can spark our contemplation of physical death and we begin to wonder how to die.

Our sense of loss emotionally and spiritually can lead to such an overwhelming avalanche of feelings that we may consider anything to be rid of them -- even suicide.

I can identify with the sense of hopelessness you are feeling right now. Like me, maybe you're feeling like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I am here to tell you that there is! There is hope!

How to Die - Discovering Hope
I needed to find hope. I wanted to stop cultivating thoughts on how to die and begin engaging thoughts on how to live!

• The first thing I did was focus my energy on how to live. I wanted to stop pitying myself for events in my life that I have no control over anyway. I realized I couldn’t change what had happened. I could only change how I personally viewed calamities in my life.
  
  
• Please don’t misunderstand, I am still having a tough time working my way through the circumstances of the last year. I fully recognize that the pain and hurt might always be there, but I will not, by the grace of God, let it drag me too far down.
  
  
• The next thing I did was turn back to my one true friend -- Jesus Christ, my Savior. I know what you’re saying: “Oh great, he has turned this to a religion thing.” Well, all I can say is, I haven’t. Loving Jesus is not about religion. It is about having a best friend who understands better than we do what we are going through. Jesus knows personally our pains and sorrows and He knows how best to comfort us.
  
  
• Next, I relied on God to comfort me. Sometimes this comfort comes directly through Him. Reading the Psalms and other Bible passage can be a source of comfort (read Psalm 34:18, Psalm 147:3, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4). Other times comfort comes through my friends who also know and love Jesus and who are there to guide.