The words to the theme song from MASH have been playing through my mind this morning. There was a second suicide yesterday, the girlfriend of the young man who took his life two weeks ago. They were both teens and the impact of these two tragedies in the community is huge. Kids are grieving, parents are frightened that it may happen again. Suicide is probably the most intensely personal choice a person can make but its impact on everyone left behind is huge. Contrary to the lyrics of the song, suicide is anything but painless.

We opened the teen coffeehouse that the church runs last night for friends to gather and share their grief. We will open it again Wednesday for an informal memorial. As I've heard many times from the kids and volunteers, we're needing to do this much too often.

There are so many feelings I've heard and felt. Grief is the first and strongest, but also fear as we wonder how to make certain this doesn't happen again. There's also anger both at the young woman for ending her life, and at the people around her for not finding a way to stop her, angry at God. The feelings are real and need to be expressed. I hope and pray they can be expressed and gotten past.

It's easy to let fear anger overwhelm us. They are both instinctive reactions that help us to protect ourselves and the people we love. Fear protects by withdrawing and hiding. Anger protects by blaming and lashing out. The problem is that it so easy to withdraw too far or to lash out at the wrong people.

As easy as it is to want to lash out, there really isn't a good target for anger in a case like this. We can be angry at the person who took her own life, but she wasn't trying to hurt anyone, or to reject their love. She was caught up in a pain so overwhelming that she couldn't see any way out. It consumed her like a physical disease consumes the body.

It's not realistic to blame ourselves either. It is the most natural thing in the world to ask what we could have said or done that could have made a difference. The difficult truth is the decision has very little to do with us. We didn't cause it and couldn't prevent it. We can and should be as loving and attentive as we are able when someone we know is going through this kind of pain. We can learn about the warning signs of suicide and watch for them. In the end even the most loving friend, the most devoted parent, or the most highly skilled therapist can be caught off guard as easily as the rest of us.

When there is no other place for our anger to go we often direct it at God. We ask how God could permit such a tragic thing to happen.

There is an odd sort of appropriateness to this because God can bear our anger in a way that human beings cannot. Whether it is suicide, or a tragic accident, or a natural disaster, or any other tragedy we cry out to God because we need to rage at someone about unfairness of it, and ask the unanswerable "why." We turn to God because there is nowhere else to turn.

We can also be angry with God because of the things we have been taught. I've heard several people saying that a person who commits suicide is automatically rejected by God and sent to Hell. I can't speak for other Christian groups but I hope our understanding that our teaching has progressed as our medical and psychological understanding has grown.

There is no condemnation of suicide in the Bible, in fact there is no use of the word at all. There are several characters in scripture who take their own lives (notably King Saul, Samsom, and Judas) but there is no condemnation of this choice any of their stories. The church's condemnation grew out of a specific historical situation. By the 3rd century the martyrs were being held up as heros to such a degree that some people were effectively daring the Romans to kill them. The church leaders made their proclamation about suicide and Hell as an attempt to change this attitude.

As we come to recognize suicide as a medical crisis rather than just a willful act that changes our understanding. Condemning people who take their own lives in anguish and depression doesn't make any more sense than condemning the victim of a stroke or a heart attack. God's love and grace surround them as surely as they do anyone.

Suicide is painful, but healing is possible for those of us left behind. I hope and pray we can trust in God's grace, and let go of whatever anger and fear we have to begin to heal. Lashing out is natural but reaching our works so much better.