Wait Out Your Stupid Inclinations (March 11, 2007)

We are just now reaching the end of suicide season, and I'm glad to see it go. A friend of mine was thinking of taking his life last week. (He's better now.) Last February I conducted the funeral of a teenager who hanged himself. Yesterday the news reported that comedian Richard Jeni ended his life by shooting himself in the head. When such tragedies occur at this time of year I always think back to some
advice that the pastor of my church gave when I was about 10 years old. He said, "Pastors should never take their vacations in January, February or March. Those are the 'suicide months.' That is the time of the year when our emergency care will most likely be needed." He was right. Little did he know that there was a fourth grader listening to his sermon that day who would take to heart his words of wisdom, and who would still be incorporating them into his own pastoral policy more than 30 years later.

Be aware of your own mental and spiritual fluctuations. Sometimes the only thing you need to do to get through a bad spell is to wait it out. I'm all for counseling and therapy and medication and everything for those who need it, but I'm also convinced that the placebo of mere patience is, for some, the greatest drug of all. Do you feel bad? Just wait. It's still March. April will be better - it always is. Let reason govern passion, and hold on just a little longer.

The other day my son saw me reviewing some sermon notes, and I explained to him what I was doing. "I wrote this around 2 AM," I said, "and I need to make sure it's still ok." Sometimes what appears to be a compelling insight in the predawn hours is in fact unpreachable nonsense, but I can't really know that till I've had a good night's
sleep and can look at it with the fresh eyes of the day. Everything about us fluctuates (or, for some of us, careens wildly). Who among us has so steady a disposition that he cannot look back on some emotions he felt or words he spoke (or sermons he wrote!) and wonder, "What was I thinking?"

Maybe we weren't thinking too well because it was simply the wrong time of the day or month or year. Be patient, and wait out your down or irrational cycle. And please don't do anything stupid in January, February or March. Wait till April, when, if you're like a lot of people, you will probably be less stupid.