Prayer. in It's Art, You Wouldn't Understand

I was supposed to get my nieces this weekend but I just got a text from their mother and it seems like one of their best friends committed suicide last night. They are in Jr. High. What the hell is going on in the world today? Both of my nieces have had suicidal thoughts in the past and this just hits too close to home. How awful. I know being a kid today is a challenge, hell it was hard when I was young and we just barely had the effects of social media and the exposure of the media and internet. Girls especially are vulnerable and my heart aches for them. The constant male gaze, the constant pressure of looking, eating, acting, dressing and presenting oneself for sexual consumption is taxing and weighing and I barely made it out of my pre-teens before the sexual harassment started to kick in. Depression is a demon we’ve all wrestled with and I can only imagine the crippling guilt and hatred that chained her.

I pray for those girl’s parents. Waking up to discover their baby dead by her own hand. What demons plagued her to drive her to such an act?

I’m trying to have a good, productive morning but that text broke my heart. God, I pray for that family and their daughter. I know she thought this world was too much for her, that it asked too much and she felt that there was no other way. I ask that you guide her soul into your loving hands. I know all the pain and confusion she felt in this realm is no more and she’s in your accepting and pure embrace. Cover her family, shelter her mother and father as they mourn for their once earthbound angel. Let them seek you in their grief so that they may find the peace that only you can give. Hold any siblings she may have had close, be the glue that holds them through this time of suffering. In their hour of darkness, be the light that will soothe, heal and mend all their wounds.

In Jesus’s name, amen.