Hope Outside Ourselves

It’s national suicide prevention week in America, and Elissa is doing a beautiful series on why it’s worth it to stay. I was reading through the posts of her guest bloggers, and thinking about my take on stay. I remembered a post I’d written a couple of months ago challenging the ‘be yourself,’ ‘you do you,’ ‘live your own truth,’ idea. It didn’t feel right to share back then, but now I realize why it means so much to me.

I agree with living authentically and being genuine. God created us with different interests, preferences, and tastes, and He has a purpose in those differences, a plan to use them together in His service. We enjoy different foods, sports, and hobbies; we like different style of dress, art, and music; we have different talents, gifts, and callings. That’s the wonderful diversity of humanity, and that’s the way it should be.

But how does this relate to suicide prevention? Because if the only direction I had was ‘be you,’ I don’t know if I would be here. When I look inside myself, it isn’t pretty, it isn’t noble, and it doesn’t offer hope. I’m selfish, I mess up, and I hurt people. Sometimes I make someone smile, achieve a goal, or find satisfaction in new possessions, but it isn’t lasting. At the end of the day, I still have reason for discouragement and depression.

It’s a law of nature that we become like what or who we focus on. To rise, to find hope and reason to stay, we have to look outside ourselves. Even if our goal is to become our best self, we must analyse people we admire, consider qualities to imitate, look at the past and choose how the future will differ. 

But my goal isn’t to become the truest version of myself, because I don’t want to be that selfish failure. I’m not aiming for the best version of myself, because all my goodness adds up to nothing before Him. Instead, my greatest satisfaction and hope begins in laying myself down, and becoming who I was created to be: like God. As Vishal Mangalwadi explains:

As I started rereading the Bible’s first chapter, I found a radically different view of the human self. It says that God created human beings in His image (“man” – both male and female). On one hand both dogs and I are creatures. We are similar in many ways. For example, we are both mammals. Yet, in fundamental ways we are very different. I cannot know the essence of my humanness by studying dogs. If I am made in God’s image, would not knowing God be essential to knowing myself? The Book That Made Your World page 47

If dogs could reason, the only place they could look to be themselves is within. There is no greater dog they are made to be like; they can’t elevate themselves. But we’re made in the image of God, to be like God. If we want to rise, to find out who we’re meant to be, to discover the reason for our existence, we have to study the Pattern. 

I believe the answer is not to look in, but to look up. That’s why I have hope, rest, and reason to stay, even amid my mistakes: I know I am loved by a God who never lets go, and He’s slowly shaping me to be more like Him.

So don’t misunderstand – we’re purposefully unique individuals. But immaterially, in your soul, in the deepest parts of life, don’t do you. Don’t be yourself or live your own truth. Look up; look to the only One who understands what you’ve been through, who picks up the failures and messes of our broken existence and meshes them together as only grace and love could imagine. Be who God made you to be: a beautiful soul created in His image. Our hope is in Him. 

P.s How rare and beautiful it is to even exist... Listen here.